Brands to benefit from World Cup

The survey was conducted by MMR Research Worldwide (MMR) at the end of May, and found that over a quarter of people will try Brazilian influenced food and drink during the World Cup, with 18 percent saying that they would be more likely to choose a product if it showed a World Cup promotion.

When asked directly, there are fairly high levels of awareness that the likes of Coca-Cola (65 percent), Adidas (63 percent), McDonalds (48 percent) and Budweiser (39 percent) are sponsoring the World Cup. But there are high endorsements too for Nike (56 percent), Lucozade (37 percent) and Mars (35 percent) that are not sponsors of the tournament, so showing how brands which are involved in football in other ways, for example by sponsoring players, are still benefitting from heightened awareness around the World Cup.

This, MMR said, provides brands owners and companies a way to engage with new and existing customers through limited edition products.

The study queried consumers’ knowledge of Brazilian food. Around a fifth thought some of the limited edition products in the UK (for example, Lucozade The Brazilian, Lucozade Sport Brazilian Guava and Pot Noodle Brazilian BBQ Steak) are ‘very Brazilian’, with the figure rising to nearly a third amongst 16-34 year olds. This is substantially behind genuine Brazilian cuisine, favoured particularly by the ABC1 social class, such as carioca beans, caiprinha cocktail and guava paste/jam. Foods such as coconut cake, black beans, batata palha crisps, cassava flour and Brahma beer, which are authentic Brazilian foods, currently have less of a strong link with the country.

MMR also issued a warning to brands based on the results of its survey, with over half of respondents disparaging of brands getting involved in World Cup promotions, which is more than the number of people that claim to have seen a food and drink brand with a World Cup in-store promotion.

‘Food and drink manufacturers need to tread carefully in view of consumers’ World Cup promotion fatigue,’ said Mat Lintern, global managing director of MMR Research Worldwide.

‘Please don’t make random associations just to jump on the bandwagon; the fit has to be just right to cut through the competition. Promotions’ true impact should be not focused solely on the immediate returns in terms of hard and fast sales but also take into consideration the impact on longer term brand equity and consumer loyalty.’

MMR Research Worldwide will be carrying out further surveys after the World Cup, including monitoring brand awareness of sponsors, and interest in Brazilian cuisine and limited edition Brazilian style products.

See David Pittman’s World Cup winners blog for a selection of themed and limited edition packaging that is available in the UK.