World Cup Advertising/Marketing

Every week to open my class at NYU, we discuss "the week in marketing," where we review brand marketing activity that we've observed.

My students picked up on the rising level of marketing activity around the impending World Cup.  The big brands are starting to kick in, and kick in big time.  So as a class we took a look at three of the biggest who have recently launched new advertising campaigns around the World Cup.

It was absolutely mind-boggling to see the sea of sameness and to see how these three particular brands chose to incorporate their branding (or not).

First up is Pepsi:


Interesting to note that, as a viewer, you can make the video much more interactive ... a way I imagine to increase brand engagement as well.


Now take a look at Pepsi's biggest competitor, Coke:



Finally we take a look at Nike, as a way to observe how these three brands all tackle the same pop culture moment from their unique brand perspective:



The consensus among the class?  Three brands tackling the same sentiment, all sounding relatively the same and relatively interchangeable.

What do you think?  What's your experience?  JIM.