An absolute worldie! The FIFA World Cup and Taxis
The upcoming Men’s FIFA Football World Cup in the US offers an exhilarating opportunity for brands, advertisers, and the London Taxi. With football royalty like Ian Wright, Theo Walcott, and Peter Crouch having featured on (and inside!) our cabs, Ubiquitous Taxis are a strategic solution for brands that want to capture attention during a tournament that has the whole world watching.
Here’s how the Ubiquitous team suggests you can leverage the excitement of football’s biggest stage, thanks to the London Taxi.
Digital and Social Activations
While official World Cup partners may have their own strategies sewn up, there’s no shortage of ideas for brands with more modest budgets – you just have to think Taxi!
The London Taxi has a reputation for delivering impactful activations around Football events. Take our collaboration with Three Mobile and Peter Crouch, who partnered with mental health charity Samaritans for a thought-provoking activity during Premier League matches around West London. Three Mobile used the London Taxi to effectively broadcast the campaign’s messages: from free rides for fans willing to talk about their mental health challenges, to thoughtful content filmed in the back of the cab with England legend Peter Crouch, there was even time to film content with the superstars from Chelsea’s Men’s and Women’s teams too. The Three Mobile activity is proof that you don’t need to be inside the stadium to get results outside of it.
Celebrity Partnerships
For brands partnering with celebrities this World Cup, the long-term payoff is real. During cultural moments like the World Cup, audiences are already primed to see superstars on the screen. They arrive with built-in emotional appeal tied into national pride, anticipation, and the drama of the game. System1 research supports the above point but notes that sport stars are at their most impactful when showing agency, natural movement, spontaneous reactions, and authentic emotion (1). Think of it as the motivation to move from scripted testimonials to real content that lets athletes shine.
Taxi Advertising is no stranger to celebrity partnerships during the Football. One example is our work with Walkers x Pepsi for their campaign with Thierry Henry and David Beckham, ‘No Walkers, No Game’. Taxis were part of a humorous campaign involving the two football legends, who surprised British households by knocking on their doors and asking for Walkers crisps. The surprise captured was genuine and added to the truth and engagement surrounding the activity. Further, just as the System1 research highlights, both Beckham and Henry were allowed to let their personality and humour sparkle. Audiences were no longer engaging with football royalty – they were engaging with a living, breathing, human, who also happens to enjoy a packet of Walker’s Crisps. The example highlights why OOH formats like Taxis are great for celebrity partnerships. They allow humour and human moments to stand out, providing the ultimate brand experience.
For brands that are hoping to capture the attention of a football-obsessed audience, there’s one thing that the above examples all have in common. Did you spot it? Authenticity is the connecting thread that makes each of these examples powerful, impactful, and absolutely unforgettable. Whether that’s thinking outside the box by using a real-world format to increase the originality of your online content, using celebrity partnerships (like Thierry Henry and David Beckham!) to literally put a genuine human face on your activity, or quite simply, letting athletes do what they do best and celebrating what makes them authentically them, staying true to your brand and the goals of the tournament are the easiest way to ensure you connect with audiences where it counts.
Besides the many Ubiquitous Taxis we’re expecting to see during the World Cup, the team will also have their eyes glued to the action as the Lions take on the world.
Sources: https://system1group.com/blog/4-ways-to-score-with-world-cup-advertising