Following our blogs on Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter – never one to miss an opportunity to spread the B2B love – we’ve set out some of our thoughts on B2B World Cup campaigns.
These kind of campaigns are an easy one to pull out the kit bag every four years or so, and help you ride the (often all too short) feelings of national pride and euphoria associated with ‘the beautiful game’.
So without further ado, here goes…
B2B World Cup Campaigns…all rights reserved
OK, I know we said without further ado. And this is definitely further ado. But it’s important to front end this article with a legal health warning. The endorsement rights around major sporting events like the World Cup are tightly regulated. If you’re not an official partner of the World Cup, you can’t use any of the trademark symbols (like FIFA World Cup, or Russia 2018). You can’t be using any of the official logos or the like. So just be aware, you may have to hook into more generic football themes on some of these creatives to avoid your day in court and landing your business in a lot of bother.
Everyone round to yours
One of the best B2B World Cup ideas is to use it as an opportunity to get to know your customers more personally. Frankly, there’s no better way to do that than over a glass of their preferred beverage: gin, wine or beer.
One of the best corporate hospitality events we’ve ever put on was at Microsoft UK’s Thames Valley Park HQ for one of those England games that unhelpfully falls in the middle of the work day. We hired out one of their impressive theatre rooms, which has plush seats with the drinks holders that you get at those posh cinemas in addition to an incredibly large screen and amazing sound.
Pizza was ordered in from the local Domino’s, and bottles were available on a free flowing basis. The footy was front ended with some light content delivery and suffice to say it went down a storm.
For the gamblers amongst you, BBQs can work well too – if you’re brave enough to go ‘all in’ on the UK weather…
Customer offers
It’s not just retailers flogging surplus 4K TVs during World Cup fever – your B2B organisation can get into the act too.
Whether it’s a certain discount based on the number of goals a particular team scores, or the round they progress to, there are some quick wins.
You may even give away a trip to Russia, as long as you don’t make the World Cup tie-in too obvious.
Merch
Branded merchandise has never gone away in B2B. When everyone’s gone footy mad, why not take advantage of it with some branded giveaways. What’s a good fit will depend on your brand – whether it’s promotional footballs, vuvuzelas or car flags (actually, not these…PLEASE).
Next month’s World Cup is based in Russia – home of Vodka and Caviar. So that would be easy to play with – you can also think outside the 18 yard box a litte.. Balalaikas? Matryoshka dolls? OK – I’m clutching at straws here, but I guess the message is that you don’t necessarily have to be obvious with your selection.
Sales Promotion Incentive Fun (SPIF)
A SPIF is a great way to get your sales team fired up. Business development is tough going, and a well thought out and crafted SPIF campaign can make all the difference.
Luckily, the World Cup offers some of the best opportunities for B2B campaigns in this area.
One of my favourites over the years has been a balloon elimination game.
You’ll need:
- Balloons
- Labels for each team in the world cup
- 32 spot prizes – mixture of booby prizes like toothbrushes and decent spot prizes (alcohol is always good)
- Labels for each of the prizes.
The overall intention with this SPIF campaign is for a sales person to have the balloon of the winning team at the end of the campaign.
Usually you will give prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and perhaps 4th. This will be a cash prize, or maybe a holiday – something big and notable to really get those sales juices flowing!
As the marketing team, get in one balloon for every team in the world cup. Put a prize tag inside each balloon and blow up.
Give them out initially and put them on the back of the salesperson’s chair. Award them based on behaviour that’s aligned with your campaign goals:
- Most leads generated in a day
- Added a new sales opportunity to a pipeline
- Generated a quote
- Closed a deal
Once they’re given out, you can tweak the goals in line with your campaign objectives if you like or stick with the above. When people then achieve that goal, they get to steal a balloon from one of their peers. So you end up with a healthy dose of nicking going on, which makes for great banter.
When a team gets eliminated, the person who has it at that time pops it and gets the spot prize (which could obviously be pants).
Obviously the top performers will always be seeking to acquire the balloons of the better teams, hence putting themselves in a prime position to win.
Obviously there is some score prediction and a dose of luck involved too to come away with the prize.
This one is always guaranteed to get the whole sales floor motivated and provides just the campaign to keep sales activity high during what can be a tricky sales period.
Goal
So there you go – five B2B World Cup campaign ideas in the back of the net. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, alternatively, if you want some help generating tactical B2B World Cup campaigns then drop us a line – we love doing this sort of stuff.
