The boys from Leicester, Kasabian are already popular with the footballing crowd as their songs have been used in many football ad campaigns, highlights and match promotions. They produce an indie-rock-electro sound which seems to strike a chord with the tempo of football and the excitement it creates; this is why they have recently signed a three year deal with the Barclays premier league.
Their lucrative deal will allow one of their most successful tracks ‘fire’ to be used in the title sequences of every match over the next three years. If this was only a deal for the UK, it would still be incredibly valuable but the league plans to use the song on every game it shows in the 200 countries it broadcasts.
Marketing manager of Puma, Brett Bellinger, knew that the world cup period would be a difficult time to gain exposure for what is, in comparison, a smaller brand. That’s why they opted for a viral campaign that creates intrigue and talk.
Adidas spent an estimated 120 million US dollars on sponsoring the world cup, something which it has done since 1970. According to market researchers Sport+Markt, Adidas had the greatest visibility in terms of teams and players.
Despite their success, Adidas were not without their misfortunes; their Jubilani match ball caused much controversy as many of the loosing teams claimed that in being too aerodynamic it became too hard to control although teams who had trained with the ball when it was launched had no complaints during the world cup and winners Spain had never touched one until the first game.
“If we had just wanted a track there are thousands that we could have used but Kasabian are seen as a football band and that makes the track much stronger,” said Paul Molnar of the Premier League.
One by one the star players featured in the ads fell victim to what became known as the ‘Nike curse’ and were knocked out of the competition, a complete branding disaster. It seems in choosing to endorse some of the world’s biggest premiership players Nike had neglected to consider the most successful teams and thus lost the branding race.
Puma have managed some endorsement success with their successful Puma King football boot. They narrowly missed out on producing the new Liverpool football shirt
