Copywriting Tips For The World Cup

'Football is played ninety minutes, and in the end, Germany wins.' - Gary Linekar.

Technically it's not a tagline, headline or any form of copywriting, but it is one of the more memorable quotes in the annals of football, the majority of fans, in many countries, will be familiar with. Good copywriting can riff on that quote. How? Ah, that's the trick...(and this is where creative copywriters like myself and may other creative wordsmiths can help out).

Most unusually, the tournament starts this year in November, as opposed to its normal start date in June. To use a quote from Yogi Berra from the sport of Baseball, however, 'it gets late early out there.' So, better be prepared ahead than scrambling late. Which will probably happen in any case. How about camels peeking through a window to watch a match? Guy Fawkes telling fellow conspirators, "remember, remember -oh, the world cup is on." The possibilities are endless.

As in all sporting events, you need to keep your eye on the ball (...) to make sure you don't miss out on anything unusual. in 2014, Luis Suarez nipped an Italian rival. Snickers took advantage of the incident, with this social media ad:

Your social media promotions need bite.

From a copywriting and content creation standpoint, the World Cup has always been a creative oasis for marketers of soft drinks, sporting apparel, travel destinations, and more. There are decades of examples to choose from, and I would take the time to do a bit of browsing of print and videos (hello again YouTube). Because you can draw a lot of inspiration.

In the past, the focus was mainly on print ads ad billboards. Heck, you even had huge, large-than-life football inspired bridges to keep drivers energized with fever pitch while driving on the way to work, or on the way home. However, with today's attention span at a premium, how do you make your brand seen/heard/talked about/shared? That, my football loving friends, is the question, which should be the focal point of brain/football storming sessions in the weeks to come (if you haven't started already).

You don't need lots of words to get the message across.

Unlike the game itself, you have an unlimited amount of substitutions, so if an ad, banner or other content piece is not bringing the requisite results, you can swiftly replace it with something else.

Let's be honest: Advertising has suffered because you attention is at a premium. But what you can do is take advantage of the international stage and fuse different cultural references in a single or even message, banners, or any other piece of copywriting or promotional content. For example, imagine the mighty Thor playing football against Robin Hood, or, Leonardo Da Vinci stopping a a King Louis penalty kick.

The beauty of a month-long tournament like the world cup, is that it allows you to take advantage of stats, scores, updates, upsets, etc, to throw your own hat into the celebration and make your brand, company or service, no matter how big or small, part of the action in some way.

And you don't have to spend millions. All you need is a good copywriter, content creator, an image software (again, in these types of ads, less is more because the focus, as you can see, tends to be more on the visual) and a couple of brainstorming sessions. Oh, and make some free time to watch the games.

Finally, remember the most important word that should be in your content...?

GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAL!!!!! Enjoy the world cup!

Looking for some help with world cup #copywriting and/or #content? Let's connect!