Marketing Lessons with Kim Anderson, Head of Marketing, FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023
What do successful businesses and sports have in common? Powerful stories and loyal fans, of course!
As the guest speaker at our recent APAC Marketers’ Meetup, sports marketing mastermind Kim Anderson shared storytelling insights from the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
With an audience of two billion fans globally, the tournament broke viewership records and sparked a cultural movement for women’s sports.
Kim’s expertise in weaving narratives and building fandom offer invaluable lessons for brand marketers, organisational leaders, and business owners alike.
Read on to discover why your customers are the main characters of your brand story and how to spark deep engagement—and leverage this knowledge to achieve your bold business goals!
“Our brand was a verb – always in action.”
Kim Anderson
Marketing Success Goalposts
Rewind to 2019: Kim Anderson and a small but mighty team had their work cut out for them to bring the FIFA Women’s World Cup to the APAC region for the first time.
Despite rising global support, women’s football was still struggling with local awareness and brand recognition compared to the men’s tournament.
By adopting a shared vision of bringing people together through sport, Australia and New Zealand went on to win the bidding campaign.
The rest is history… and a valuable lesson that a good narrative becomes a strategic marketing tool for brands to connect with their customers, aligning their brand values with those of their audience.
Lesson One: Begin with the End Game in Mind
The bidding campaign was just the beginning. When Kim took on the Head of Marketing role at FIFA, they faced challenges from the start, with a two-year lead time to prepare and mobility issues due to COVID-19. This contrasts sharply with the 2019 Qatar Men’s World Cup, which benefited from a 12-year lead time, larger budget, and more engaged fan base.
Kim’s team had to learn how to do more with less. They were smart and strategic, choosing social media, PR and experiential marketing to spearhead the campaign.
Plus, they cleverly harnessed the power of collaborative partnerships with brands like Qantas, Adidas and Visa to boost initial awareness, support, and engagement. Mobilising both internal and external stakeholders was crucial for driving marketing success for FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023.
Takeaway:
- Phase your campaign to leverage the power of partnerships and key sponsors who have more funding and audience reach. By investing in earned media first, you’ll ensure that your campaign goes the distance without blowing out your budget.
Lesson Two: Adopt a Challenger Brand Mindset
Challenger brands are willing to challenge and disrupt the norms of society, thinking beyond existing business categories and products to make a positive difference while also achieving commercial success. For the FIFA Women’s World Cup ‘23 team, this meant attracting and reaching people who were not existing sports fans and thinking beyond traditional marketing approaches and media platforms.
Kim and the team at FIFA embraced continuous innovation and improvement. This took the tournament beyond the traditional sports brand stereotype to create a brand that would inspire social change in favour of women’s sports.
Takeaway:
- Create a bold vision based on stories and lived experiences that appeal to a wider, social audience. Keep your story authentic, relatable and accessible, whilst setting benchmarks for the marketing success you’d like to achieve with your brand.
Lesson Three: One Brand Strategy, Many Stories
‘Beyond Greatness’ was the brand story and strategy adopted for the World Cup bid campaign in 2019 to the World Cup kick off in 2023.
With a commitment to creating a culture brand, not a sports brand, an overarching vision was needed to define and drive the story forward.
By embracing shared values of inclusivity and unity, the stories became more relatable and engaging, helping people connect with the brand and inviting them to be a part of its journey.
Learning insights on the ground, the team were able to tell many stories and tailor the delivery to each unique market so they became part of the bigger story. Inclusivity was also reflected in all the events, products and brand experiences offered.
Takeaways:
- An inspiring brand story has the power to transcend cultural differences regardless of fan nationality or sporting team. Staying true to your business mission will help you stay on track and deliver on the story. To help extend its reach into mainstream culture, FIFA formed strategic collaborations with market leading retail partners like CottonOn. Fans were able to demonstrate their support by wearing custom-made streetwear and merchandise, helping to amplify the message and become brand advocates in the process.
- This strong brand framework helped people to recognise their own story while coming together around a shared vision. Telling stories that captured people’s aspirations while inviting them to support and champion the event was crucial to the success of the overall marketing campaign.
“You win with the people you connect with and engage deeply. This is key to the authentic stories you tell – and the stories those fans will go on to tell about you. Give people ways to become an advocate, get involved or learn more.”
Kim Anderson
Lesson Four: Dive Deep to Find the Stories that Connect
Powerful sports stories often emerge off the playing field, where you might not expect to find them. FIFA reached out to real sports fans, customers, and everyday people in their communities to understand their genuine needs, concerns, and cultural customs. This engagement aimed to find ways to make them feel included in the Women’s World Cup and enhance overall engagement and participation.
Takeaways:
- Deep customer insights provided the untold stories that truly connected with sport fans from all over the world and made all the difference to campaign success, inspiring a wave of social supporters that felt part of the action. From showing up to local events to cheering on their own and other teams, FIFA’s audience shared in the global spirit of sport.
- Remember, your customer is the main character of your brand story, not the business or your product/service. The key to marketing success is listening and learning from the people you want to reach at a grassroots level.
Lesson Five: Be Exceptional in Your Design and Delivery
Be front of mind when your customers are ready to engage, as trust is built on commitment and consistency. To create brand champions and achieve fandom, it’s critical to live up to your business’ promises. To exceed customer expectations and strive to go ‘beyond greatness’, you need to be creative and innovative in your delivery – especially to cut through marketing ‘noise’.
Takeaways:
- Stay agile in delivery so you can deal with curve balls as they arise. However, always remember to captivate your audience and create an immersive experience—not just a campaign.
Here’s a list of resources recommended by Kim Anderson at APAC Marketers’ Meetup:
- Meltwater: Media monitoring and distribution
- Canva: Design and creative automation
- Nielsen: Market research and metrics
- Hello Social: Social marketing agency
Lesson Six: Think Global, Act Local
Use the power of local marketing to connect people and communities to the big picture. There are many different people, nations, languages and cultural identities within Australia and New Zealand alone. Grasping local nuances and customising your message to resonate with people is essential for crafting compelling stories and impactful marketing. This approach is vital to the success of any campaign.
Takeaway:
- FIFA used an integrated multimedia approach to telling stories, designing a digital platform and social media tools to create a fan following beyond their favourite sports team.
- Fun, interactive tools let people participate, engage, and bring together local and global fans while building trust and enjoyment. For example, their trophy tour, Unity Pitch, fancestory quizzes helped to engage digital communities of super fans.
End Game: Kicking Big Goals
Crafting a compelling brand narrative is essential for achieving marketing success. With the power of storytelling, you can elevate traditional market categories into extraordinary experiences.
By focusing on the key players in your business and crafting exceptional narratives, you can turn abstract concepts into tangible outcomes and customers into loyal brand champions.
Understand your audience deeply—engage in meaningful conversations, be genuinely curious, and create opportunities for connection at every stage of the story. Fulfill your brand promise and empower people to achieve their goals, dreams, or enhance their lives.
At the heart of effective storytelling lies authenticity and creating real value that speaks to the needs of your customers.
Remember, as a marketer, leader and business owner, you have the power to write your own success story.
Make it count.
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