The FA struggles to “get noise” for local brand partners around the World Cup says commercial chief Stuart Turner
The FA’s commercial director Stuart Turner has said that the association finds it difficult to “get noise” for its local brand partners around the World Cup, given that the tournament is owned by FIFA.
Speaking at Advertising Week Europe on a panel about the "Social World Cup", Turner said that its partners in the UK find it a challenge to break through the official World Cup sponsors and get their brand voice heard.
“The World Cup is obviously not our event, it's FIFA’s event, and FIFA have a family of partners and sponsors. I’ll use Vauxhall as an example – a UK car manufacturer that doesn’t produce cars anywhere else in the UK – and it’s very difficult for them to get cut through at the World Cup,” he revealed.
“We do get certain opportunities, and FIFA do give us some leeway around our press conferences on our own training camps where we can use those backboards for example. But that’s it on a traditional media sense.”
Turner said that the FA needs to capitalise on social media to push its UK sponsors but admitted that the FA is “not very good” at creating a dialogue with fans and that it “needs to be better at it”.
He added that a lot of the general public thinks the association is full of “FA blazers” and “fusty people”, and he hoped that through the use of social media this could change.
“I think if we’re seen to be proactive in this area and actually engage that audience, talk to that audience and react to that audience, then we can change the perception,” he said.
Over the course of the World Cup Turner anticipated the video content the FA plans to distribute across various platforms will garner around 40 million views.