Nestle has earmarked a budget of Bt40 million for the campaign, which includes a licence to use the England team logo and photographs of the team's players on its ice-cream products.

Philippe Eberle, executive director for ice-cream and chilled-dairy products, said the campaign, which runs to the end of September, is aimed at promoting Eskimo, one of its three ice-cream sub-brands.

He said the promotional campaign would take up about 12 to 13 per cent of Nestle ice cream's overall marketing budget this year.

The highlight of the campaign is the chance to get hold of a silver football bearing the signature of one of the England players. There is one ball for each player.

In order to get one, customers must purchase a specially designed England football team passport, which sells for Bt10 at convenience stores and Bt13 from ice-cream tricycle vendors.

Then, they must buy any Eskimo ice-cream product to collect a sticker featuring a football player, until they have all 10 stickers. They can then redeem them for a specially designed football.

The company has put stickers in 100 million packages and expects to see sales growth of 25-30 per cent during the campaign, said Eberle.

Piyapong Chitchumnong, the ice cream's brand manager, said Thailand's was the only market in which Nestle was conducting this campaign.

He said it took one year to survey and finalise how the company would differentiate itself from competitors, because most snack-related companies tended to formulate campaigns to coincide with the World Cup.

And Nestle thus chose to associate itself with only the England team.

Eberle admitted that identifying with only one team was quite risky, because it depended on that team's success.

However, he said Nestle had conducted a survey and found that the England team was the most popular among Eskimo's target consumers: children aged 6 to 12.

"They know many football players, such as David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, in depth," said Eberle.

Nitida Asawanipont

The Nation