The role of football
in marketing

For over 60 years, Coca-Cola has advertised in the stadiums at every FIFA World Cup™. Ricardo Fort, Coca-Cola’s Vice-President of Global Sports and Entertainment Partnerships, explains why the beverage company became a big brand, talks about how complex campaigns are launched, and reveals the identity of his football idol. 

Ricardo, you come from Brazil where people are crazy about football. Did you play football yourself?

I did. I played as a goalkeeper growing up, all the way to my college/university days, and then I retired after that. I guess my skills allowed me to get only to that point.

Is it true that you’re a big fan of Zico?

Yes. If you grew up in Brazil, being a teenager in the ‘80s, that was the law, you had to be a fan of Zico. So yes, I’m a big fan of his.

You manage one of the most extensive portfolios of sports partnerships in the world. Where does football rank in terms of importance for all of Coca-Cola’s current sports partnerships and why?

Well, football is by a very large margin the number one area of investment, and not only for the Coca-Cola brand but for several other brands, and we’ve been investing in football for a very long time. The reason why we do it is because when we promote our brands in the context of football, the brands grow faster. People drink more, people like the brands more, and that translates into loyalty and future consumption. So football has been a great platform for the brands to have a space in people’s mind and to be part of their lives in a way that is more meaningful.

Was it always a dream for you to work for Coca-Cola?

We talked about Zico before, and when Zico shot a commercial for Coca-Cola in 1982, right before the FIFA World Cup in Spain, I fell in love. The story of the commercial was Zico giving his shirt to a kid in exchange for a bottle of Coca-Cola. I was the same age as that kid and all I wanted was Zico’s shirt, and that commercial stuck in my mind. Since then, I thought that if one day I could work for Coca-Cola that would be great, and I’m very fortunate that I’ve been working for Coke for 17 years now. I’m very fortunate with the job that I have.

But are you still waiting for the shirt?

It never happened! I have never met Zico.

Coca-Cola has been involved with the FIFA World Cup since 1958. How would you say the partnership has evolved and developed since then?

Well, I think the partnership somehow evolved or influenced the changes in the sponsorship business. In the beginning, the primary reason for sponsoring events, I think back in the ‘50s, in the ‘60s, was to have products available for the fans in the stadium. So, at that time, you had broadcasting but it was not as pervasive as it has since become. So having products available was very important. Signage was not really a big deal.

Until Coca-Cola became a big brand...

Exactly. As the company expanded its operations internationally, the sporting events and football became a source of awareness for the brand. So every time Coke wanted to open a new market, football was a very important tool to be present and to be relevant in people’s lives because they care about football. So the expansion, the international expansion, happened, to some extent, at the same time that we were sponsoring football events internationally.

In recent years, the idea of brand awareness has become less important because the brand is so well known internationally everywhere you go, so we moved from that to using football as content to communicate our stories. People pay attention to football, and there are so many great stories in football that have parallels to what we’re trying to say, trying to tell, so we use a lot of content from football to fuel the stories.

And because FIFA and the FIFA World Cup have been everywhere, that has been an integral part of this journey. Our history and FIFA’s history, the FIFA World Cup history, are very well connected because of all of that.

What is the first World Cup that you can remember?

Argentina 1978. I was nine years old, but I don’t remember the action. Of course I followed the games later in life, but what I remember, growing up in Brazil, was just fireworks, and disappointment. My father bought a lot of fireworks that were never used because Brazil didn’t win the tournament.

How important is it for a brand like Coca-Cola to associate itself not only at the top level of football but also at grassroots level? And why has the company adopted such a wide approach to its football-related marketing activities?

Well, football works on different levels for us, and you have the aspirational level where people look up to players and to clubs and to national teams as a source of hope and happiness. That happens at the FIFA World Cup, or every time your national team or your club plays, but football is consumed every day now, and in many different ways. Playing is a big part of it, so we have developed tournaments all over the world, and we have supported youth, boys and girls, that wanted to play, organising football where football was not organised.

If you go back a couple of decades, the level of infrastructure in many countries was very low. So Coca-Cola helped to close this gap and offer opportunities for people to play. But there are other ways that people consume football in addition to playing and following their teams, in conversations, in TV shows and different sources of content.

Regarding considering new partnership opportunities within football: can you explain the process? How do you decide which entity is suitable for a sports partnership with Coca-Cola? And then, what are the next steps until you launch a marketing campaign?

It all depends on the business objectives that we have in that particular country or region. So if we are launching a new brand and we need to build awareness and visibility very quickly, we may look for clubs or national teams or players that have a large base of followers, or players who are very present or constantly in broadcasting. Then we can use branding on kits or other kinds of activities. That has become less and less necessary for us. We need to increase consumption and preference with young consumers.

Can you give us an example?

Let’s take the example of a 20-year-old boy or girl who is interested in football. In that country, we use football to be in front of those young people, with reasons and stories that make them connect and exchange with us. So when we tell stories, for example with social media, and we have interaction with people, they build a relationship with the brand. There’s a very structured process on our side to evaluate the value of partnerships, so for every partnership that we sign, we have a methodology that allows us to say how much that investment is worth for us, how much that investment will generate in incremental sales for us. And we quantify that all the way to profit, and with that number in mind we know how much we can invest.

Every investment that we make has be profitable, it has to drive returns for the company, both in the short and long term. So it comes from identifying the business needs, looking at the market place and what’s available and then, when it comes to football, negotiating based on the expected results that we aspire to have from that association.

When all of that has been done, we can finally go into negotiations with the partners, usually because we have been involved in a lot of different contracts. We know what we want, we know the people on the other side, so the conversations are easier. They also know what a brand like Coca-Cola can bring to their organisation, so it is usually a good conversation. That's why we have current contracts with over 250 clubs, and with over 30 national teams and leagues. And then comes the fun part, which is to develop communication, to engage with the players, to engage with the clubs and build communication for the fans. All of that is a process that usually takes five to six months, and we can launch campaigns relatively quickly anywhere in the world.

How do you see the future of sports partnerships regarding football when it comes to data and the digital and social dimensions in today’s marketing?

Data has become one of the biggest components of our work. Unlike other digital companies, Coca-Cola sells physical products. We have to take bottles and cans to points of sale in shops everywhere, and we have to understand how consumers behave both on social interactions, social media, but also what they’re buying. So we have examples of intelligent vending machines that can provide information in real time on what people are consuming. So we launch campaigns that drive and influence certain behaviours, and based on that people consume certain products.

All of that is connected and we use this data to improve the process when it comes to social conversation. One of the best examples is what happens during large tournaments like the FIFA World Cup. So how we’re present in those moments, how we use the information that is available through social media partners to send messages. Messages which are more meaningful so that people will feel more compelled to interact and engage with the brand.

Coca-Cola has advertised in the stadiums at every FIFA World Cup since 1958. With new technology and state-of-the-art football stadiums, what are some of the trends and novelties that football fans can expect to see in stadium advertising around the world, both from Coca-Cola and in more general terms?

Most of the evolution that has happened over the last few years has been about becoming more connected, allowing people to use technology while in the venue. Not only to consume information about what’s happening on the pitch, but also about the conversations that are happening outside. Connectivity is very important, and there’s still a long way to go.

Some arenas and venues are very well connected. We have an example here in Atlanta in the United States, where one of the main venues in the city is very new and well wired for connectivity. But when I go back to Brazil and watch some matches in other countries, it’s not necessarily the same case. If that’s in place, you unlock a lot of different opportunities for sponsors and for clubs and fans to interact.

I think this is going to be the major transformation, turning the live experience into a live-plus-virtual experience on site. When it comes specifically to the work that Coca-Cola does, the opportunity to pre-order food and beverages, to have your order delivered to your seat so that you don’t miss any of the action, that’s also critical. How many times do you want to tell someone that you are there, in the stadium? Something meaningful is happening and you cannot get connected? In the future, you’ll be able to share your stories, hopefully about Coca-Cola as well, about what is happening during a football match, instantly.

Ever since its launch ahead of the 2006 World Cup, the FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour by Coca-Cola has been one of the most impactful programmes for Coca-Cola and FIFA. Can you explain the objective and strategy behind this initiative?

This is a project which is very close to me. When I was a global football director for Coca-Cola back in 2003 or 2004, when we were preparing for the FIFA World Cup in Germany, we had the idea of creating the tour. So we worked with the FIFA management at the time to create the conditions for doing exactly that. So this is a joint initiative between Coca-Cola and FIFA.

The FIFA trophy, the real FIFA trophy, the one that is barely seen and barely used, other than by the winners, is taken on a tour for three months and we travel with the trophy. Our commitment was to take that the trophy to all of the associations around the world. We wanted to create excitement and engage the football associations in other countries so that their fans were more connected to football. So that they’re more excited about the FIFA World Cup that is coming.

For us, it was an opportunity to create events for different constituents that will allow us to do our jobs better. So when we arrive with the trophy in a country, in a big decorated plane, we have a lot of ceremonies. We have a big consumer event. We take the trophy to the government and to NGOs and to the football association and to customers. So everybody experiences the FIFA World Cup that is coming, sometimes in six months’ time, sometimes it’s a little bit closer. That allows us to start our promotions and activations way earlier, and that has an impact on our business as well.

Do you have a special highlight?

Yes. One fun fact of the tour was that when we first started, we tried to figure out the insurance for the trophy. Because it's so unique and so precious, nobody wanted to sign a policy. So we decided that nobody could touch the trophy, only heads of state and former winners. It was a great way to protect and to create some magic around the trophy. When we go to a country, you see heads of state, and I saw this with former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe in Japan. He opened his house up to the tour. We took the trophy. All of his ministers were there, and he held the trophy up, looking around and thinking ‘I can do this, nobody else can’. Again, he went from the head of state to a fan. That’s the magic of the trophy. That’s the magic of the tour.

Regarding market share and brand recognition, what role does and will football play in Coca-Cola’s efforts to maintain its position as the world’s largest beverage company?

People care a lot about football, much more than they will ever care about any brand. And when we associate our brands with things that matter to people, and with football being the number one, people will somehow care more about us than they would otherwise. So because of that, people like Coca-Cola more, they drink the product more often, and that is part of their football memory.

Many people, when they think about what they were doing when they were watching an important match in their lives, remember that they were drinking Coca-Cola. So Coca-Cola was part of their experience, and becoming part of their experience has a very, very important impact on the way they see the brand and they consume the brand, and therefore the impact on our business. I don’t think we would be where we are today if it wasn’t for football.