June 3, 2015
Relaunching FIFA: can it be done?
FIFA’s website says that its goal is: “the constant improvement of football”. On the site, there’s a fair bit of self-congratulatory copy about making the game more global, and about helping young, disadvantaged people to play in an environment without prejudice. There is less copy about helping old, highly privileged people to line their pockets while bringing these other good things about. But maybe the copywriter didn’t get briefed on that part.
FIFA has a great deal to say about being an environmentally friendly brand: “We work hard to limit, our impact on the environment, inspiring greater awareness and best practice in sustainability standards at all of our events.” Just don’t mention Qatar. Or private jets. Or white elephant construction projects. As none of these count, it seems.
To be serious: Blatter will soon be gone. But Blatter is not the brand, and the brand is still highly toxic. I’ve written before about Ryanair, as an example of a brand made more toxic by its own leader. And there are parallels. Mr O’Leary did not fall on his sword, of course. He ran into a nose-diving share price, and this triggered a rapid character transplant, which has, in fairness, helped to detoxify the brand.
It won’t be so easy for FIFA. It has no sense of “customers” at all, as things stand. And it has no share price. So the usual drivers of Sudden Good Behaviour aren’t in the mix. Typically, Brand Renaissance has a number of stages: acceptance, resignations, apologies and then strategic repair is the usual sequence. But, in this case, we have had resignations without acceptance and there’s very little chance of apology in the near future.
This suggests that repair is a fair way off. The test will be what happens over Qatar (we probably have to give up on anyone daring to take on the Russian Question). Let’s put it this way: if this brand wants to change its image in any meaningful way, the World Cup will need a different venue for the 2022 Tournament.
That’s how to relaunch a New FIFA: by undoing the deeds of Old FIFA.
2 Comments
I guess there is a role in brand renaissance for grand gestures but it would be shallow and ultimately self defeating if that gesture weren’t proved to be justified. I would argue that taking the world cup away from Qatar, unless the success of the bid is proven to be have been manifestly corrupt, would do nothing to ultimately revive the FIFA brand. Decisions of that magnitude would have to be seen to be based on sound principles of justice or else it would be no better than the illegitimate process that awarded it in the first place.
Far more important to the brand renaissance would be the wholesale overhaul of the systems and processes of FIFA and the awarding of the World Cup. The most sensible suggestion I have seen was in The Observer last Sunday and which involved splitting the World Cup “business” from the FIFA “football charity”. In this way a payment from a government to the FIFA charitable activities which could be seen as purely philanthropic or a bribe would never enter the equation and the whole process could be cleaner and more transparent. Brand revivals are a long term process and short term populist grand gestures shouldn’t be seen as a panacea.
Thanks for this Karl: Of course baseless gestures (grand or otherwise) would be counter-productive. And, sure, one brave decision isn’t a long term brand panacea.
But the Qatar decision is already “unjustifiable” with or without corruption (a daft, oven-temperature location, proved to be wrong time of year already etc.) Other respectable bids for 2022 were manifestly more sane and on brief. And I suspect that you won’t have to wait too long to discover that the the Qatar bid is proven to be “manifestly corrupt”, given that there is already plenty of evidence that previous bids have been just that. See today’s Guardian.
On process:not too sure what you are concerned about, as a process involving the “principles of justice” is precisely what is underway in the US and in Switzerland. I agree with the Observer’s suggestion, by the way, but that doesn’t rule out unpicking Qatar. Separate angles. Parallel routes to renaissance. Non?
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Brand refreshment is probably overdue:
3 years ago
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