Qatar World Cup puts global brands on the ropes.
Sponsoring a World Cup is an opportunity for any brand. It means having a global audience of hundreds of millions of people and linking your brand to the world’s most popular sport.
However, things change when the host is a country where human rights are not respected and whose values clash head-on with those of any global brand.
Faced with this, there are only two positions to take: either to be totally against it, or to cover one’s eyes and focus on celebrating soccer. And there are examples of both positions with greater and lesser commitment.
Perhaps the most belligerent brand in this regard has been BrewDog. The Scottish brewer has declared itself a “proud anti-sponsor” of the World Cup in Qatar in a series of controversial billboards. But even BrewDog has been branded as hypocritical because with this action, at the same time, it is encouraging its audience to watch the World Cup. The brand has defended itself by saying that all the profits linked to this action will go to fight for human rights.
This World Cup has been a real test to check the real commitment of brands to their values. Because, although we have already experienced other controversial World Cups in this sense, today the world is different: our society and its values have evolved. And so have brands and what consumers expect from them.
Because, more than ever, commitment is relevance and coherence is credibility.