Adidas ahead in World Cup battle

Peter Crush, PR Week UK, Thursday, 30 March 2006, 12:00am,

With ten weeks to go before the start of the 2006 World Cup, sports giant Adidas is galloping ahead of the 14 other official partners in generating coverage of its sponsorship.

Research by Factiva for PRWeek shows that since September 2005, Adidas has achieved over 50 per cent more World Cup-related mentions than its nearest rival Coca-Cola, with 154 compared with 100.

The research measured all mentions across 10,000 UK and European feeds and shows Adidas and Coca-Cola together are responsible for more than a third of the total share of voice of all 15 partners.

As well as leading the official partners for mentions, Adidas has achieved nearly three times as much press coverage as non-partners Nike and Puma, who led successful guerrilla campaigns around the last World Cup.

Spikes in coverage for Adidas coincided with the launch of its '10+1' campaign last October and the unveiling of the official World Cup ball in December.

The worst-performing sponsors thus far are Fujifilm and Continental Tyres. Each have just six mentions since September.