Celebrity endorsement and the French Football Team
A 20-years long love/hate record

20 years. This is what it took for the French football team to win a second Worldcup. After France victory against Croatia in the World Cup final on July 15th, “Les Bleus’” popularity reached a new climax that echoed 1998. A perfect occasion for brands to benefit from a renewed relationship with the public. The love between the players and the audience has not always been smooth. From Zidane’s head-butt during the 2006 final to the players’ strike during the South African Worldcup in 2010, these past 20 years have shown how unstable endorsement could be when letting the French football players be your flagship.
UP TO 25% OF TV COMMERCIALS USE CELEBRITIES
Over decades, endorsement strategies have followed consumer behavior evolution. They have always given insights on the target itself, the culture, the time we live in. This explains why football players today are more likely to represent brands than any other sports worldwide, except in the USA. Overall, endorsement is highly valued by brands to embody a product. In the United States, 20 to 25% of TV commercials use celebrities, as it rises even higher in Korea and Japan.[1] Latest studies show a steady increase over the past years.[2]
But creating meaning through a celebrity requires a great deal of behavioral understanding. An efficient endorsement strategy relies way less on skills matching (I love football + a football star talks about a product = I love the product) than on the values the celebrity caries. Endorsement revolves around identification and how a brand can recreate the same bound the audience has with the celebrity. One could even think than football itself has nothing to do with that. Only achievements through transcendence. Michael Jordan and his Nike lifetime deal might be the best example of it. As television stepped into a new era during the 90’s, celebrities became the best ones to endorse brands in featured content.
1998–2004: THE GOLD RUSH
On July 12th1998, the French Football team made it to the top of the world, at home. For the very first time in France, people from all generations and all socio-professional categories started considering football as a major topic. It became a national matter.
One of the main consequences for the players is that each one of them became highly valued flagships for various brands. Zinedine Zidane of course, lead the advertising race: Leader Price, Volvic, Ford, Orange, Canal Satellite, the French top player signed multiple endorsement contracts in addition to sports sponsoring. The whole team became sponsor material to address the mainstream audience and not the exclusive football community anymore. Danone, McDonalds, Petrol Hahn, L’Oréal, Lu, from sports brands to telecommunications, some started talking about an advertising overdose.

As this advertising omnipresence started irritating the audience, the Champion era came to an end. Soon enough, people were fed up with sandwich board football players.
2006–2012: THE DISENCHANTMENT
Not only the French football team was losing but key faces started conveying less positive values. The French coach, Raymond Domenech, reached hate peaks, the famous Zidane got expelled from a final after a violent act and things were just starting to get out of control. The climax was reached in 2010, when the players decided they would go on a strike during the World Cup in South Africa. Brands did not wait a minute before suspending ongoing campaigns with the national team. As some of them simply broke their ongoing contracts such as Quick and Crédit Agricole, others started asking for compensatory allowances. “Les Bleus” went from top endorsement material to advertisers’ repellants.
Once again, it is essential to understand that skills and even popularity have nothing to do with profitable endorsement. The case in point remains Karim Benzema. Despite being one of the most talented of his generation and being a top influencer on social networks, Karim Benzema only signed 4 sponsoring contracts since 2000.
2012–2018: THE SECOND CHANCE
Time after time, one tiny step after another, the French Football team earned the audience trust again. Still in 2015, only 22% of football players engaged in an advertising contract in France… were French. But they kept going up in the polls. Sure thing, a Worldcup helps a great deal. But the main reason of this second chance was somewhere else.
The team and the players conveyed values that French people (and brands) like to believe in: patriotism, trust in their potential, team spirit, respect for the elders. These “Bleus” were lovable again and brands started believing in their capability to be ideal ambassadors.
But players learned their lesson as well. Some of them, like Pogba or Mbappé, even stated that they did not want to become “living ad boards” and would refuse most sponsoring contracts. This shows how endorsement in this case has designed a new relationship between a brand and a celebrity. Both need to share the same values to spread a coherent message to an audience.
The latest Nike commercial “we won it in France” is the best example of it: Mbappé is supposed be the star of it but one can only see him a few seconds in it. The whole commercial revolves around the origin city of the player, the love for the country, the team humility. The values before the skills, the team before the individual performance, the young player before the star. This might be what endorsement has become for the French Football National Team after 20 years of a turbulent love/hate relationship.
RETHINKING ENDORSEMENT
New advertising territories and contextualization allowed by facial recognition could create amazing opportunities for future endorsement strategies. As of today, there is no practical way to measure ambassadors’ true exposure. Reminiz is actually working with the ambition to help brands monitoring any of their ambassador on any video platform in order to compare it to views and ROI.
The way brands build an endorsement success still revolves around old-school advertising video campaigns breaking the viewing experience in the middle of our favorite videos. This also explain why endorsement can miss its target completely. Either because the brand and the celebrity does not match, or because the timing is not right.
More than any other advertising form, endorsement needs to be contextual and create sense for the viewer. For instance, pushing Pogba’s pair of shoes every time the player scores a goal during a live game would probably make more sense than watching him promote a soda during tonight’s movie ad-break.
If random ad funnels were to be replaced by in-content contextualized and native inserts, everyone would win. Not only would the brand benefit from contextual appearances but the viewer would see a real interest in interacting with the brand if he has something to gain or to learn.
As the French Football team should remain very bankable within the next years, it is time to rethink endorsement strategies and to help brands fully merge with these French player’s recovered values.
This is Reminiz true ambition with its unique video understanding capabilities.
[1] Understanding the Effectiveness of Celebrity Endorsements, D. Hussain & K. M. Khan
[2] The effectiveness of celebrity endorsements: a meta-analysis, J. knoll & J. Matthes

