Major marketers are gearing up to face one of their biggest advertising challenges ever--how to facilitate global marketing by making a single ad that appeals to consumers in different nations all
around the world. That's a job for marketers who will advertise on television coverage of soccer's World Cup, a month-long tournament scheduled to begin in Germany in early June. The games will be
shown in 189 countries to an audience that makes the crowd watching the Super Bowl look small. For agency creatives, the challenge is enormous. "World Cup makes the NFL Super Bowl look like an amateur
event when it comes to creative advertising," says Larry Flanagan, chief marketing officer of MasterCard International, a sponsor and major advertiser at the tournament. Other U.S. marketers planning
to participate include Anheuser-Busch and Gillette. A-B says it will spend more on World Cup advertising and marketing than it did at the Olympics or Super Bowl and plans to air a modified version of
an ad it ran on the Super Bowl. It shows fans in a stadium holding up cards that create an image of Budweiser beer being poured into a glass. "If you get too complicated you will lose people with
different cultures and perspectives," says A-B's vice president of global sports marketing, Tony Ponturo.
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