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China Have World Cup Fever!

After scouring about on various SNS and microsites, from the UK to Asia, it's clear that many sites in China have really gone to town in terms of their promotion of the next big footballing spectacle.

Consider the modest efforts of Visa's World Cup Match Planner - basically a glorified Facebook calendar giving you a schedule of the games and allowing you to share amongst friends. Functional, but unlikely to raise any eyebrows. On the other hand, there are fully affiliated sponsors, such as Mcdonalds, who have stuck to the text book footy-related promotions on the official South Africa site: including a Fantasy World Cup competition, and the Fifa World Cup predictor, which offered the prize of winning tickets to the very event itself.

In contrast, a short browse across China's interweb reveals a plethora of focused, yet frenzied, World Cup-featured sites, some linked with SNS, others offering the latest information, news and related promotions.

First, there's Pepsi's Football Carnival. Tribal DDB's effort is the equivalent of a football fan at a safari: the contextual mishandling will generate a few chuckles, with Football players wearing tribal-war paint, and the theme of carnival rides and European architecture sprouting out from a jungle-cum-floating island. Yes indeed, Pepsi China have thrown out the text book for what makes a "Football-related promotional site", instead aiming to mesmerize with some pretty crude and gaudy flash effects and animation.

On playing around with this site, yours sincerely became greatly disappointed on finding the QQ-backed promotion is just that, with QQ's standard promo-site interface sitting behind the series of "flashy flying" effects, which offered me a Glass Elevator-like journey across South Africa's as-yet-undiscovered island only to dump me into a sobering QQ coo.

Behind the site, the grand vision of Pepsi's canned-snake flying through a shoddy representation of Green Point stadium is replaced by the usual QQ fare. There is a vast array of Pepsi-content, most of it related to football (including a Pepsi football news desk) and featuring its tribal football ambassadors. In other areas there are the usual QQ-point earning games with footballs crudely superimposed on the classic rudimentary games. A poor disguise.

So whilst Pepsi's QQ attempt is hardly going to attract the passionate amongst the Chinese footie fans, it can't be faulted for its flagrant and bombastically oddball embrace of South Africa's vision. There are also a few "cutting-edge" games including a webcam hand-eye co-ordination game which further establishes this Pepsi attempt as a glorified gaming zone with a Football afterthought. Nevertheless it demonstrates the scale of enthusiasm for which China's Brands will seize a sporting event, seemingly to capture this audience via the thinly veiled mechanisms behind the average QQ experience. No one seems to be complaining though.

Then there's Harbin's attempt. As the official Chinese sponsor of the World Cup there has been a fairly mature effort made, suiting the older audience with the partnership on Renren and activities more suited to it's viral-video-watching audience.

On arriving at the site, Ruud Gullit's scarecrow mop is a sure sign of a more authentic attempt at addressing a sporting event. Click further, and Ruud even appears -albeit with a cropped cut. He invites the user to enter the Harbin competition: a keep-me-up contest in which users show off their skills, submitting their exploits on the renren community page.

Although fairly shallow in terms of content, I think Harbin engages its brand quite effectively with a football-interested audience; plus the videos of failed football skills guarantee a good ole bellyache and transmit the idea of football from brand to person whilst acknowledging the sporting event. As with QQ, it is clear the intention of both sites is to create more interest and raise awareness of the World Cup to an audience waking up to Football. With this goal is the tie-in of the brand with the sporting enjoyment- something McDonalds have achieved with great success since USA 94.

Beyond Harbin, it's also interesting to see how Soho (http://2010.sohu.com) has crafted a specialized World Cup site and CNTV have also got a very dedicated special section: http://sports.cntv.cn/football/special/2010.

In terms of my run-through: It's not that equivalent interest doesn't exist in the West, but that China's digital media spotlight has been turned so brightly, celebrating the arrival of the world cup with a directionless, yet ecstatic pomp. Over in England, where fanfare is directed in national interests, the brand message lies more closely with the national expectations and figures. The message is not about raising awareness of the world cup, but creating the sense of hope and expectation associated with particular players or teams. This may explain the colorful embrace of Pepsi's floating island safari in China; on another level, perhaps the marketing Brits are too busy betting on the sponsorship opportunities surrounding a world-cup winning England team. 22 days to go!