Packaging World stricken with Football Fever

Hardly any other time generates as many sales as the run-up to “earth-shattering” sporting events. Then product packaging is printed in national colours or with portraits of national teams. In some cases, brand owners go as far as even renaming their products for a certain period of time. 

This is precisely what the Belgian beer brand Jupiler – sponsor of the Belgian national football team ‘Diables Rouges’ – did: they renamed themselves Belgium. The new name has been featured on 290 million cans, bottles and glasses for five months now since 20 February. One of the beer brands among the highest-revenue brewery groups in the world, Anheuser-Busch InBev, already rebranded a product back in 2016. Back then shortly before the Presidential elections in the USA ’Budweiser’ was rebranded ‘America’ for one Olympic summer. This marketing campaign seems to have paid off and this is why a complete re-branding will take place for the second time in company history and a corresponding advertising campaign will be developed around it.

Rum brand ‘Captain Morgan’ has not changed its name but part of its brand logo instead. The labels of the special editions of the rum bottles feature pirate Morgan, whose name is said to go back to the Welsh buccaneer Henry Morgan, resting his boot on a football instead of the usual rum barrel. This special brand appearance of spirits producer Diageo is accompanied by a brand cooperation with Pringles. Whoever buys a bottle of Captain Morgan Original Spiced Gold receives a free Pringles Original-Fan-Edition with it. Eye-catching displays in German national colours staged in a stadium look are hoped to generate extra attention in retail.   

As one of the partners of the FIFA World Cup and organiser of the FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour Coca-Cola also takes on a sporty look and feel. For the German market there is a limited edition of “player cans” featuring the silhouettes of the national team. And Coca-Cola is also present in the Panini World Cup Sticker Book. Only those drinking Coca-Cola will be able to fill the last double page with twelve legendary football players. After all, these pictures do not form part of the official collection and can therefore only be found on 500 ml Coca-Cola bottles and Coca-Cola Zero PET bottles and/or be ordered via a hotline.

The Italian group Ferrero also turns consumers into ardent collectors. Whoever buys the ‘LOVEBRANDS WM 2018’ special editions of the product brands Nutella, Duplo, Kinderschokolade or Hanuta receives adhesive points to be collected in a matching collector’s book. Those collecting sufficient stickers can look forward to receiving such goodies as backpacks, loudspeakers or footballs signed by the national team players. It should not be forgotten though that fun and memories are the most important ingredients in this collection. After all, when you recalculate the prices you will realize that an Adidas football – without signatures – costs as lot less than 35 Nutella jars totaling almost € 100.

A survey carried out by the Berlin service provider PoS-Pulse in 2016 showed that marketing campaigns in packaging developed for sports events pay off for companies. On the occasion of the World Cup 430 consumers were polled how they rate the efforts undertaken by companies in food retail and which manufacturers struck them at the Point of Sale. Three Ferrero brands managed to end up in the Top 5. Ranking first was Nutella. 37% of the consumers surveyed said that they occasionally bought such products even though they did not figure on their shopping list.