FIFA WORLD CUP 2022 — FIRST-TIME EVENTS AND 3 MARKETING MISTAKE LESSONS FOR BUSINESSES

The opening ceremony’s theme song rang out, announcing that the biggest football tournament on the planet, the FIFA World Cup 2022, had officially begun.

Despite investing an enormous amount (over 300 billion USD) into preparing and organizing this tournament, Qatar still made some very big mistakes — and that showed clearly right in this host team’s very first match at this year’s World Cup.

Those mistakes from Qatar inadvertently created several “first-time” events at a World Cup — and what does that have to do with marketing? Let’s find out with The Fool.

1. Marketing mistake #1: a low-quality product, yet lavish overspending on marketing

• The first “first-time” event at the biggest football tournament on the planet: the host nation spent over 300 billion dollars on World Cup preparations.

Spending over 300 billion clearly shows the host nation’s leadership was determined to make this a resoundingly successful World Cup on their own soil.

However, this inadvertently led to their very first mistake. At the same time, this mistake is also a genuinely painful issue in marketing, since it violates the very first P (Product).

• A low-quality product (here, the Qatar national football team)

We all know Qatari football has never been highly rated on the international stage. The clearest proof: at the 2018 AFC U23 Championship, this very same current Qatar lineup tasted a bitter defeat against the Vietnamese national team.

Granted, in football, form is temporary. But losing to a team ranked only 96th by FIFA, one that had never once qualified for a World Cup finals, is a real alarm bell about the actual strength of the Qatari players competing this year.

On the other hand, there’s no denying Qatari football has made impressive strides, and for the sake of hosting the World Cup, they’ve focused on developing football for the past 12 years. But that stretch of time isn’t quite enough to turn “coal into diamond.”

Back to our classic example, the Vietnamese national team: to reach our current level, we had to build and develop football over many years prior, through Chairman Đức’s story.

Qatar pouring in such a massive investment also created no small amount of pressure on a team that wasn’t yet strong enough to compete at a World Cup.

That showed clearly in how Qatar’s players took the field with heavy legs, unable to create any meaningful chances against Ecuador’s goal.

=> If your product isn’t good enough in quality, yet you keep pouring money into promoting it, that will end up creating enormous pressure on your own company.

2. Marketing mistake #2: choosing the wrong KOL (Jung Kook), one that didn’t match what the target audience (football fans) actually cared about

• The second “first-time” event at the biggest football tournament on the planet: an Asian singer took on the KOL role and performed at the World Cup opening ceremony.

Leveraging a KOL is always a fantastic marketing strategy — it helps your product quickly reach more consumers thanks to their reach.

However, this strategy is a double-edged sword when you use a KOL that doesn’t match your target customer’s insight.

So where did the strategy of using Jung Kook, star of the hit band BTS, as the KOL for this World Cup go wrong? Let’s find out with The Fool!

• A bit about Jung Kook

As the youngest member of the massively popular band BTS, Jung Kook had, by age 25, achieved no shortage of admirable milestones, including several major music-industry awards, chart-topping records, and recognition on the world stage across his teenage years and early twenties, on top of being named a special envoy for the President of South Korea and performing at the Qatar World Cup opening ceremony.

However, if you tally up all the awards this young man has earned, and BTS’s activities over the years, do you notice anything?

It’s that neither he nor BTS ever had a single music award or activity tied to the world of sports (aside from selling out a US stadium tour, which also wasn’t meant to promote this field) — until being invited as the KOL for the 2022 World Cup.

Before this, he and BTS had actually built an image for themselves that was quite the opposite of someone associated with sports or sports-related work.

• What football fans thought after hearing Jung Kook perform at the opening ceremony

According to Lao Động newspaper, today’s edition carried a line along these lines: on football fan pages, the reaction skewed largely negative, with fans of the beautiful game showing little warmth toward Jung Kook and BTS. Many felt Jungkook’s vocals were weak and failed to capture the same fiery energy as past World Cup opening performers.

That said, the host country’s own singer, Fahad Al Kubaisi, received plenty of praise, with most agreeing his voice carried real power, heat, and true footballing spirit.

Dân Trí newspaper’s edition today similarly noted that many felt Jungkook’s vocals were too weak to match the fiery energy of past World Cup opening acts like Shakira or Ricky Martin.

There’s no denying some praise and pride, especially from Korea and Asia more broadly, for this 25-year-old’s first appearance at the world’s biggest football event. But the potential customer (football fans) wasn’t particularly satisfied.

You could say Qatar’s decision to pick Jung Kook instead of a female singer already well known on the World Cup stage, with the kind of stage-igniting, fiery music that someone like Shakira brings (perhaps for cultural reasons), was an extremely risky move for the planet’s biggest party.

=> If you go against your potential customer’s demographic, no matter how flawless the marketing strategy, it still won’t work. This proves just how important the process of researching “Customer Insights” is for a business.

3. Marketing mistake #3: deliberately hiring fake fans and allegedly bribing Ecuadorian players for a first win, creating an effect that was far too obvious and didn’t fit the product (ineffective seeding)

• The third “first-time” event at the biggest football tournament on the planet: the host team lost its own World Cup opening match.

This happened because:

• Before the tournament, many articles had already exposed Qatar’s leadership for allegedly hiring fake fans to fill their stadium, since locals didn’t show much interest in football.
• What’s more, arrangement scandals were uncovered, with leadership allegedly making failed backdoor deals with a few Ecuadorian players and the first match’s referee to secure a winning result.

Imagine being a Qatari player hearing this news — would you still feel motivated to play hard? Not to mention, as covered above, their ability simply wasn’t enough for a stage as big as this World Cup.

• Connecting this to seeding strategy in marketing plans

These exposed incidents from Qatar — and, much earlier, the FIFA bribery scandal to win hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup — played out extremely blatantly and couldn’t escape the press’s notice.

What’s more, these incidents got exposed precisely because fans and other countries’ football federations already knew the real footballing strength of a nation that had once lost to Vietnam.

=> Seeding is very important for a brand. But the seeding process needs a script — one that isn’t too obvious, and one that’s grounded in the genuine quality of your product and service.

In conclusion:

Despite these mistakes, overall, Qatar’s opening ceremony was executed with tremendous, meticulous care.

What football fans need right now is to enjoy the wonderful atmosphere of this biggest day on the planet, and look forward to the masterful performances that will unfold on the host nation’s carefully invested stadiums.

As for marketers, I hope you’ve gained some interesting perspectives from this World Cup, and grow ever more creative in crafting compelling marketing campaigns for your own business!

THE FOOL — EASY KNOWLEDGE CHANNEL