Word: cupful
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Think the World Cup is contested just on the pitch? With the finals less than a month away--on Adidas' German front lawn no less--Nike and Adidas have launched their broadest, most expensive marketing campaigns in the history of sport, all tied to a single event. (Nike is spending more than $100 million, Adidas closer to $200 million.) Some 32 billion cumulative viewers are expected to tune in to the World Cup, and an additional 3 million people will be taking in the tournament in 12 German cities. For both companies, it is the setting for another epic chapter...
...their goalmouth--tenaciously. "I don't think it's a question of whether we have to win this battle," says Günter Weigl, Adidas' global soccer chief. "We can comfortably say that we are going to win this battle." Besides having home turf, the company is an official World Cup sponsor and will pay $350 million over the next eight years to extend that privilege to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. Those billions of eyeballs will see only Adidas signage in the stadiums, and the company's black-and-gold Teamgeist (Team Spirit) match ball will be passed around...
...brand by capitalizing on the 1970s jogging boom and the growing global infatuation with basketball in the 1980s and 1990s, headlined by the most valuable endorser in corporate history, Michael Jordan. Adidas seemed invincible in soccer because the sport put the company on the map. For the 1954 World Cup in Bern, Switzerland, Dassler had designed the first soccer shoe with replaceable cleats, or screw-in studs, at the bottom. An hour before the final between heavily favored Hungary and Germany, Dassler surveyed the muddy field and figured his German team needed longer studs to improve traction. Germany upset Hungary...
...time the World Cup rolled into the U.S. in 1994, however, Nike sensed a chance to expand its global profile. "Phil [Knight] realized that to be relevant and leading in the world of sport, not just in the United States, you have to be a leading brand in the world's most popular game," says Remlinger. And of course, the company wanted to crush a stumbling Adidas--which had lost $100 million in 1992--for good. By 1997, in true Nike fashion, the company signed an iconic endorser--the Brazilian national team, fresh off its '94 World Cup victory...
Although Adidas has doled out millions to be the official sponsor at each World Cup since '94, Nike crashes the gate every time. In 1994, an unmarked van pulled up to the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla., before a match, recalls Jeffrey Bliss, chief marketing officer for World Cup '94. The driver dropped off about 150 free Nike caps--JUST DO IT, BRASIL, they read--which soon became one of the hottest items at the event. In France, Nike's "Tour de Foot" caravan brought free clinics to some 50,000 kids around the country, and the company...