Well, let’s be honest, the on-pitch action hasn’t exactly set the world of football on fire in the six days since the tournament kicked off, has it? I mean, a draw to me is worse than losing. I hate draws. To me, they’re like the sporting equivalent of sexual abstinence – fruitless and likely to inspire mass genocide.

Pointless metaphors aside, there’s been a nice marketing battle between Nike and official competition sponsors adidas, who have both been vying for public prominence in what is always a tough time for companies to stand out.

Nike’s ‘Write the Future’ campaign, developed by ad agency Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam has been nicely received, and the full version of the ad has been viewed, at the time of writing, more than 15.5m times on Youtube.



Making of here.

Comparatively, adidas hasn’t launched a World Cup specific ad campaign as far as I can see, with videos such as the star-packed ‘adidas Originals - Star Wars Cantina 2010’ launched a few days after ‘Write the Future’, amassing just fewer than 3.3m views on Youtube at the time of writing.



With so much subconscious marketing going on between the two sports brands, namely the fact that the players are sporting branded gear in the shape of team strip and boots, I’d argue that it’s not easy to one-up the other.

In my PR/marketing mind, there has to be a winner, so I thought I’d take to social media (what sort of PR would I be if I didn’t retreat to ‘social media’ grounds to validate my existence and wordy words?) to look at how both are getting on.

Here are the facts:

Nike:

Facebook – 1.19m people ‘like’ it
Twitter – 12,200 followers

adidas:

Facebook- 0.87m people ‘like’ it
Twitter – Couldn’t find an official football Twitter account

Of course, the numbers don’t tell the whole truth always, but having ‘liked’ both of these brands' Facebook pages since the start of the World Cup, my opinion is that the engagement and messaging through Nike’s Facebook page edges that of the activity through adidas’, with each Nike update ending with the key brand message: ‘Write the Future’.

Without taking the time to tally up how many ‘likes’ and comments Nike has vs. adidas, I’d speculate that there is much more in the way of social engagement on behalf of Nike’s ‘likers’.

From a media point of view, there’s been very little to choose between them, as neither seems to be doing much in the way of proactive PR. The most obvious difference is the way that adidas’ Jabulani ball has been blamed for the poor goal tally thus far, even being blamed for England keeper Robert Green’s idiot error against the United States that allowed them to turn up late to the game (typical Yanks) and equalise.

adidas’ brand name has been very negatively associated in the last few days in the media, to the point where thousands of news articles mention the ball in a less-than-positive light: here.

The engineers at Loughborough University’s Sports Technology Institute, the team behind the ‘roundest ball ever’ have responded with a somewhat lukewarm media response in my opinion, shifting the blame from the ball to the fact that the teams are playing at altitude (the England-USA match in Rustenburg was played at an altitude of 1,500m).


Unnecessarily large image of said ball.

I’m crap at the science behind it, (I work in PR, give me a break), so here’s a snippet of their response to complaints about the ball:

‘I think many of the observations can be explained by the effects of altitude rather than the ball per se. The ball will travel further. It will travel faster. It’s the basic physics that the air is thinner and the resistance to any projectile is less so the flight path of the ball will be different at high altitude’, said Institute director Mike Caine.

I wasn’t the only one that noticed the overall feeling that Nike were running away with the game either, having found a survey by audience measurement chiefs Nielsen, that shows that Nike are the ones creating buzz online, having analysed blogs, social networking sites and message boards.

According to the Nielsen survey, Nike’s 30.2 percent share of online World Cup-related buzz is more than double that of adidas, which owned just 14.4 percent of ‘Web buzz’ – despite the fact that adidas are one of the official sponsors of the competition.

You can view their full report here.

Nike has also made headlines through its offline marketing, namely creating its own ‘Mount Rushmore’ in London as part of a billboard campaign. Despite the fact that the ads included Theo Walcott, who didn’t make the final World Cup squad, the reaction has been favourable and complimentary.



In short, I could have saved 800 words by saying: adidas need to up their game, as Nike are stealing the march and doing a great job of it.

Thoughts and comments are welcome, as always, although if you disagree, I will take it upon myself to believe that you work in marketing for adidas and are thus either: 1. Blinded by allegiance 2. Less observant than Stevie Wonder, or 3. More jaded in your perspective of real life than Paris Hilton.

Stay in school, kids.