Colombia is a soccer-mad country whose exploits in previous World Cups are fondly remembered by soccer fans worldwide (who could forget Carlos Valderama and his massive hair tearing down the field during USA 94?!) Despite the failure of its national team to qualify for this year’s tournament, Colombia is still excited about the World Cup and brands are keen to take advantage of this. Initiative client Rexona has achieved the coup of sponsoring two of Colombia’s main online destinations for soccer fans: the soccer section of Terra and Futbolred.com
Futbolred.com has been live on the Web for six years, is the leading dedicated soccer site in Colombia and is widely renowned for its young and independent journalism. It gains nearly 17,000,000 hits per month: 2/3 of these come from Colombia while the remainder from the rest of Latin America and the wider world.
"We obtained premium spaces and presence during the World Cup for Rexona on Futbolred.com in order to create a "marriage" between Futbolred.com and Rexona for the mid and long term. Soccer is an important communication platform for the brand, well after the World Cup is over" said Luis Lopez, Internet Director for Initiative in Bogota.
Terra is one of the largest Spanish speaking portal sites in the world and is a FIFA licensed broadcaster for Web transmissions of photos and videos for the World Cup. It has developed a format that allowed each brand to up to 4 creatives on each page. Rexona shares sponsorship with two other brands, but no two brands are advertised simultaneously on the site.
"We wanted to be where the fans would be," says Carlos Alzate, Account Manager for Rexona in Colombia. "When not in front of the TV watching a game, or listening to a radio broadcast, we know the fans will be checking results and reading gossip at either Futbolred.com or the World Cup special at Terra- and our brand has the strongest presence possible on both sites".
Check out the Futbolred.com and Terra sites.
