Case Study:

THE DARKER SIDE

OF THE WORLD CUP

I’m Sarah.

In my day job, I run ‘s

Global Neuroscience Practice

Last September, I swapped the world of

brains, behaviour and brands for a new

kind of communications challenge.

I took part in a project with

in Recife, in the North East of Brazil.

I spent a month working with a group of

NGOs to find ways for communications to

help fight the human rights abuses

occurring during preparation for the

2014 FIFA World Cup

When Brazil were awarded the world cup back in 2007, the decision was met with cheers and

excitement the world over.

One of the most passionate footballing nations was going to host the biggest, most exciting

tournament in the world.

Football was coming home.

But as with many big global events, hosting the

World Cup has a darker side too.

Since being awarded both the World Cup and the

2016 Olympics, the Brazilian government has

made a big commitment to regeneration, with

promises of pacification of favelas and tourist-

friendly transport systems.

However, a large part of this regeneration has

involved ‘cleaning up’ areas around stadiums.

Often these stadiums are being built in very poor

areas, and a lot of the people living there are being

forcibly evicted from their homes.

As literacy and access to independent informed

advice are both very limited, this often means

people being ‘tricked’ into signing away their

homes. By the time they realise they’ve been

tricked, there’s nothing they can do to avoid being

evicted.

Comitê Popular da Copa is a group of NGOs, universities and social forums, led by

Habitat for Humanity.

They are united by the aim of fighting for the human and housing rights of poor

people in these regeneration areas, to make sure the World Cup doesn’t create a

housing, health and humanitarian crisis for Brazil’s poor.

I was working alongside an experimental agency made up of a team of

advertising students at a local university. Together, our job was to work with the

Comitê to find a way that communications could help them meet their aims.

Plan and launch a communications

campaign that will help secure

for all families and businesses

forced out of their homes.

FIFA could impose sanctions and start

punishing governments for exploitations of

human rights in the name of the world cup.

There are two main mechanisms that might motivate the government to change their stance:

Given the timings (30 days), the

campaign budget (R$4000), and

our number of contacts at FIFA

(none), we figured we probably

weren’t going to be able to

influence this that much! {

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The other route was to make the government fear that by not acting,

they risked losing public support.

Crucially for us, being the year that state governor Eduardo Campo

hopes to run for President of Brazil, losing public votes was not

something they could afford to do.

So this is exactly what we set out to make them fear.

There are two main mechanisms that might motivate the government to change their stance:

Garner widespread,

highly

visiblesupport for a

pressure campaign

urging the

government to pay

fairer compensation

to those it has

displaced

The aim of our campaign:

ARE YOU AWARE THAT PEOPLE IN RECIFE ARE

BEING EVICTED FROM THEIR HOMES FOR THE

WORLD CUP?

15%

85%

YES

NO

33%

2%

20%

28%

12%

5%

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE SITUATION?

A bit of research showed us that there were a number of jobs to be done with communications:

INFORM: Raise awareness of the issues amongst the wider population

ENABLE: Give people a way that they can show their support

MOTIVATE: Create the desire to force a change

News and media in Brazil

are largely state

controlled.

The chances of us being

able to buy any ATL

advertising space or get

any PR coverage that

was critical of the

government were pretty

much non-existent.

We had to think

creatively, and create our

own media.

We created a campaign for people to unite behind under the banner of ‘Nós Valemos Mais’ –

‘We’re worth more’.

A message to unite a city, and let the government know that when

they treat any of their citizens poorly, they harm us all.

We set up digital hubs through which we could share information,

demonstrate support, and get people to take simple actions to add their

voices to the message

We gathered real stories

from those being evicted

and turned them into

images that could be

shared.

'Dona Josefa' is losing not only

her house, but also her

business. She owns a few

properties in Camaragibe, from

which she makes all her income.

The government offered less

than 10% of the value for each

property.

We photographed

the abandoned

buildings waiting to

be demolished and

used these as the

backdrops for our

campaign

…and we used those

buildings marked for

eviction near busy bus

routes as a free

outdoor media to

graffiti our messages

on to

(with their owner’s

permission, of course!)

We got up in the middle of the night to set up installations in popular middle class

beaches and parks, to drive awareness of the evictions.

And took along iPads to get people to sign up to our campaign there and then.

The installations

were unusual

an surprising

enough that

people took to

sharing their

own snaps and

tweets

Within 72 hours our facebook posts

had been served to 90,000 people

in Recife.

If nothing else, that's 90,000 people

who now know what's happening

that probably didn't before.

(For the total sum of $44 in media

spend)

DAY 1 DAY 2 DAY 3

Engagement with the campaign was immense,

with a click-through rate and organic sharing

way above that normally seen for Facebook

messages.

But this was just the start. WE started to build an

audience for the Comité, but it was over to them

to carry on growing and motivating it – long after

I’d gone home.

So the last part of our campaign was to create

guidance and guidelines to enable the Comité to

keep posting, and keep people engaged.

Whilst local NGOs and pressure groups can lobby governments from the ground up, only FIFA really have the power to enforce any standards on any great scale.

At the moment, there is nothing motivating them to do this.

But if their major corporate backers started to care, there might be.

SPONSORS HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE FIFA ACT

SPONSORBRANDS

Was there the opportunity to use our relationships with those clients to highlight the risks to brands with being associated with such atrocities?If brands knew of the risks to their reputations, would it encourage

them to take more responsibility as sponsors of these events in future?

{Millward Brown works with many of the major global sponsors of FIFA and the world cup in multiple markets.

MAJOR SPONSORS OFGLOBAL EVENTS LIKETHE WORLD CUP

Once back in my day job, I ran a study looking at measuring

people’s instinctive feelings towards the 2014 World Cup and the

brands that sponsor it, to investigate the impact that awareness of

these negative issues has on people’s opinions of sponsor brands

36%

47%

53%

61%

83%

90%

94%

94%

96%

97%

Ban of unauthorised merchandising

Human rights abuses

Breaches of workers’ rights

Forced relocations

Transport system not ready for the event

Political misdoings

Corruption

Usage of public funds for stadiums construction

Tickets too expensive for part of population

Delays in the construction of stadiums

The government misled the population, saying they would not spend a

penny of public money in the hosting of the World

Cup – but they have spent billions of our

money!

The data showed that by the end of the tournament, virtually everyone in

Brazil was aware of issues around corruption and the expense of the

tournament - and well over half had heard of forced relocations!

Awareness of issue

Even outside of Brazil, awareness of these negative issues was growing

with international pressure mounting on FIFA to take more action

Awareness of issue

23%

41%

44%

32%

51%

41%

61%

50%

59%

68%

18%

39%

41%

28%

44%

35%

44%

31%

45%

60%

Ban of unauthorised merchandising

Human rights abuses

Breaches of workers’ rights

Forced relocations

Transport system not ready for the event

Political misdoings

Corruption

Usage of public funds for stadiums construction

Tickets too expensive for part of population

Delays in the construction of stadiums

Post-tournament Pre-tournament

I love the World Cup. However I feel that the body that governs the World cup is corrupt…This

World Cup has been high in tension because FIFA didn't take into account the expense of the

tournament and how that would effect the very poor under belly

of Brazil. I think the head of FIFA Sepp Blatter should stand

down.

The study showed the potential negative impacts of the increasing awareness of issues like corruption and political dishonesty on people’s

perceptions of the brands that link themselves to the tournament.

This gave us the opportunity to talk to our clients about this risk, and what they could do to prevent these issues in future events.

BRAND 1 BRAND 2

The whole experience of doing a project completely surpassed all expectations. I

am hugely proud of the team, the work we produced and the amount of success we managed to

have in a limited timeframe on a very limited budget.

It was an incredibly experience, and I want to say a huge thankyou to thank everyone who gave

their time, money, ideas and enthusiasm to making it work.

Particular thanks must go to Philippa and Michael at TIE, WPP for supporting the placement,

and Millward Brown for letting me go – and indulging me and letting me run the project when I

got back!