A World Cup Special

What with the World Cup still looming large in the national consciousness (albeit less so after England’s dramatic-yet-completely-unsurprising exit), I figured that I should write a proper post about advertising and the World Cup. Sadly, this is difficult because there are virtually no adverts associated with the World Cup at the moment…Ok, so football-based advertising reached saturation point some time in mid-May and has continued since then, until it’s got to a point where there are literally no links between the product and football.

So here are the Top 5 Most Tenuous Links To Football Adverts:

Joint 5/4^th: Mars Bars/Macdonalds

So attempting to place these products with a level of conviction that isn’t in keeping with the world cup, here are two candidates from the world of convenience foods; MacDonalds and Mars Bars. Both are foods that are at least partially responsible for the obesity crisis that is set to plague England in the coming years. By the time the 2030 World Cup comes around, the average England player will have to get tailor-made jerseys to accommodate their girth.

MacDonalds is an Official Sponsor of the World Cup, and therefore has likely paid $10m-25m a year between 2007 and now. And Mars has got John Barnes to feature on their advert, rehashing his performance for New Order’s “World In Motion”:

Despite changing their packaging and dredging up John Barnes’ (thankfully short) rapping career, I’m inclined to give MacDonalds the edge of the two, purely for spending so much money. And whilst their advert endeavours to show the variety of football fans that visit the MacDonalds through the course of a day, it could similarly feature a range of criminals- from benefit thieves to serial killers- and still include the poetry.

Surely after spending such an absurd amount of money on the right to use the South Africa 2010 logo in their adverts, they should at least get Peter Crouch in to kick about a happy meal box (assuming they didn’t clash with his Pringles obligations).

3^rd: Continental Tyres

Continental, like MacDonalds, is World Cup Official Sponsor, which means that the commercial breaks on ITV are currently plastered with ads for tyres. Sadly none of these seem to have appeared on youtube. However, this one- featuring a guy kicking a tyre along a road- has:

With the spectacularly smug tag line “Expert Corner Taker and World Class Stopper” trying it’s best to shoehorn some similarities between football and driving a car (and to be fair, prompting a moment of mirth from me in the process), I’d have to give them an 8/10 for effort to go with their 2/10 for relevance to football (the 2 is for things that appear to be the same shape from a 2D perspective).

2^nd: Carlsberg

Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of the ads featured in Carlsberg’s long running “Probably the best Lager in the world” adverts. The slick, and incredibly cool “If Carlsberg Did Night Clubs” (featuring Dusty Springfield’s Spooky) is one of my favourite adverts ever.

Whilst being relevant for a post training session binge- Carlsberg already has footballers and beer, all they need is a Coke problem and allegations of a nightclub rape- it goes way beyond “inspiring” and into “gaudy” territory. Featuring a number of English sporting heroes and some wonderful English imagery (a lion, knights and, for some reason, Kasabian), this advert wears it’s patriotism very much on its sleeve. Which is all well and good. Until you realise that Carlsberg is based in Denmark.

1^st: We Buy Any Car (dot com)

Likely to appear at the top of many other lists (mostly for adverts that cause aneurisms through the sheer weight of their irritation) is the We Buy Any Car adverts. Recently they released a new advert featuring a newsreader dancing about and generally looking like a prize tosser (albeit a prize tosser with decent co-ordination). Following the “success” of that, they decided to keep it relevant by including a football.

Like a local shop adding a crude drawing of a football on the sales boards around its beer aisle, it is completely transparent. A company that buys cars is completely irrelevant to football. I don’t see how it can be anything more than a total waste of money. 


Honourable Mentions:

Barclaycard: A guy watches a goal on tv, then runs to Africa. Scores goal. I actually really liked this advert so don’t want to say anything mean about it. (EDIT: The wonderful Kate Hinksman has told me that this is in fact not Barclaycard, but is in fact VISA. Scratch one from my research skills, I got the wrong contactless technology. Anyway, the advert can be viewed here.)

Pringles: Pringles change their name to “Pringoals” and have Peter Crouch kicking an empty tube in a bin. Then doing the robot.

Toshiba/Currys: Offering the opportunity for idiots to gamble on England winning, Toshiba offered £10 for every goal England scored and Curry’s offered to refund the price of a TV if England won. Shrewd purchasers would have rushed out and bought a Toshiba television from Currys. Smart buyers would have bought a better tv somewhere cheaper.