Fifteen brands representing 12 different industries have won bids to become the official sponsors for this year's Fifa World Cup in Germany. As well, at least seven sporting products have their names emblazoned across the shirts of the 31 national football teams. Other global and local companies are using the merchandise that comes with the national teams to promote their images.

You do not have to look any farther than Bangkok to see the build-up of excitement as the event draws near. Poster portraits of international football stars are omnipresent on the Skytrain, canned cola drinks feature pictures of World Cup players, and a big billboard at Siam Centre shows a larger-than-life image of rising Portuguese star Ronaldo, among others.

The World Cup, despite limited attention from the US, commands the world's biggest audience base every four years. The Olympic Games are losing theirs, and those for Grand Slam tennis tournaments pale in comparison with the football summit.

Football also has the added magnet of its heroes. Quite apart from the skill and excitement of the 90-minute games, a sizeable slice of the female audience is drawn to the event simply to ogle the beefcake on the pitch - be it David Beckham, Ronaldo or a score of others.

Another thing that makes the World Cup the most-watched sporting event is the world's vast base of football enthusiasts. The imagination of a single, massive audience is concentrated on just this one event, and it is thus a far more popular audience experience than, say, the Olympic Games, which must risk stretching its audience over a wide range of competitions.

That's why the 15 advertisers have poured an enormous amount of money into sponsoring the event and allocated even more funds to conduct spectacular campaigns and activities that associate their brands with the cup.

The 15 big-name sponsors are Adidas, Fujifilm, Budweiser, Gillette, Hyundai, MasterCard, Coca-Cola, US telecommunications firm Avaya Inc, Continental Airlines, McDonald's, Deutsche Telekom, Philips, Emirates Airlines, Toshiba and Yahoo.com.

Some of them have even signed up to sponsor the event in the future. Coca-Cola, for instance, is contracted to be an official sponsor until 2022, which earns it the title of "elite" Fifa partner.

The official sponsors have the right to make use of World Cup-related items to stir up brand loyalty and attract new customers. For example, presenting the football that was used in a crucial match as an attraction in a distant campaign, showing the history of the World Cup or arranging for customers to get in touch with their idols in Germany when the cup competition begins.

However, there is another group of companies that plays a big indirect role in the event. These are the seven brands that sponsor the 31 teams in the competition. They are Puma, which sponsors 12 teams; Nike, seven teams; Adidas, six teams; Ambro and Lotto, two teams each; and Marathorn and Joma, one team each.

These companies rely totally on their teams' ability to perform well and draw big audiences to their matches for the success of their sponsorship. Their products' names are worn on the players' shirts, and there's usually a long-term arrangement under which the sponsors contribute to their teams' development between World Cups.

As well as these, the World Cup attracts countless other advertising campaigns. Some are indirectly involved in the competition, others completely uninvolved. Coupons and lucky-draw competitions are common. It is also quite usual for advertisers to offer return flights to a World Cup game as a competition prize.

Even advertisers conducting low-cost campaigns within their own countries can count on drawing on the massive popularity of the event.

In the next instalment of this series, The Nation will elaborate on the strategies of the main companies for exploiting the World Cup to win consumers' hearts away from the pitch.

Nitida Asawanipont

The Nation