At a press conference during the 2020 European Football Championship, Portuguese striker Cristiano Ronaldo made it a point to remove two bottles of Coca-Cola from him and off-screen. Then he held up a bottle of water and said “Água!” – “Water!” – in Portuguese.
Ronaldo is known for his healthy diet. He avoids all sugary drinks and says that he gets annoyed when his kids drink the stuff. So his objection to sharing the limelight with Coke bottles isn’t surprising. He received public support from Tom Brady, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback, who attributes his own legendary football career to healthy eating.
Ronaldo’s move caused an uproar in the media and social media that was soon dubbed the “bottlegate”. Some news sites linked his rejection of the drink to a $ 4 billion loss in Coke’s rating on the same day, though the events are likely unrelated. At least two other players made similar moves. The Italian player Manuel Locatelli pushed aside Coke bottles and said “Water!” in Italian, and the French player Paul Pogba, a Muslim who doesn’t drink alcohol, also moved a bottle of Heineken off-screen. It was supposedly non-alcoholic but looked like a regular beer.
Of course, none of these drinks happened to be there. Both Coca-Cola and Heineken are long-term sponsors of Euro 2020 and other high-profile football events. It’s fair to say that this wasn’t what they were hoping for when they signed those big checks to UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, which runs Euro 2020.
Here are a few great lessons any smart entrepreneur can learn.
1. Celebrities have their own mind.
Famous athletes can give your product or business a huge boost. Just ask the founders of Away Luggage what partnering with Serena Williams has done for them. But star athletes are people and they have their own values and beliefs. They may be aware of the power their names and their image hold – especially when they’re in the middle of a high profile tournament. It was probably foolish to believe that someone like Ronaldo, who has been advocating healthy eating for years, even passively advocates a drink he won’t let his own children drink. The most surprising thing about all of this may be that it has never happened before.
2. Don’t lose your cool.
Coke’s reaction to the whole affair is impressively low-key. UEFA issued a boring statement in response to Ronaldo’s gesture, simply saying that “everyone has a right to their drink preferences”. Given Coke’s sponsorship of the Games, it is very likely that the statement was drafted with the company’s approval. When asked for comment, their representatives referred NBC to the UEFA statement and said Coke had nothing to add.
It might have been tempting to post a snappy comeback like Amazon may have. But Coke executives are smart enough to know that this would only add fuel to the fire. After Pogba and Locatelli also pushed bottles away, UEFA issued a second statement saying it had “reminded the participating teams that partnerships are an integral part of running the tournament and ensuring the development of football across Europe are”. It added that the participating national leagues had contractual obligations regarding sponsorship. This was a little less boring than UEFA’s first statement. But maybe the tournament organizers wanted to make sure there were no more bottle presses.
3. Do not get stuck on a product that has expired.
Even if you’re a company as big and powerful as Coca-Cola, you can’t turn back time. The fact is, sales of carbonated, sweet soft drinks have been declining over time, despite a temporary surge caused by the pandemic. Industry experts have long encouraged companies like Coke to expand beyond sweetened soft drinks, and that is exactly what the beverage maker has done. Ironically, one of the big categories is actually bottled water – the company owns both Dasani and Smart Water. Investors know this, which is why Ronaldo’s move is unlikely to have affected Coke’s share price.
A great takeaway from Bottlegate is that even if you have an iconic brand, you need to spot trends and move with the times. The other is that in today’s influencer-driven world, no one should expect star athletes – or anyone else – to promote a product they don’t believe in.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not Inc.com’s.
source https://dailyhealthynews.ca/cokes-soccer-sponsorship-backfires-spectacularly-in-bottlegate-as-star-players-shove-bottles-aside/
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