FIFA World Cup 2014 – A Global Conversation

Our last post on this blog mentioned one of the many FIFA World Cup-centric ads that are currently being aired across the globe. After watching a few more over the last week, I wanted to profile one particular ad which I believe captured the true spirit of the event in a very relatable, and global context. The ad I am referring to is the ‘Global Issues’ ad which was aired by the U.S. sports television channel ESPN, and bears the tagline ‘Every 4 years. The conversation starts again’. 

In a nutshell, the ad features a handful of people from different countries, having essentially the same conversations, but with different opinions. The ad is produced and edited in such a way that when one person starts the conversation, another will continue or complete it; depicting therefore a series of  conversations that occur across different age groups, races, and genders. Due to this clever editing, the key message of the ad is very clear – regardless of where you are in the world, everyone will be talking about the World Cup.

Although this ad hasn’t garnered the same attention as perhaps the higher profile ads by McDonalds and Adidas, there is no denying that it doesn’t have a global appeal, and could easily be aired across any country without the key message being lost in translation. What makes it so powerful is that viewers gain an instantaneous understanding of the FIFA brand community, even if like me, you have little interest in sports.

All you need to know in order to understand this ad is that the World Cup is as much about the players and teams, as the people who watch it. It’s the global conversation that really drives the event, and so ESPN was very clever to point this out, and really celebrate the people who make this event the big deal that it is.

Salil Kumar
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School