Brands are drawn to sports for the same reasons the fans are.
It’s about elite performance, it’s about the competition, it’s about the drama and above all it’s about the passion. And where international sports are involved its about national pride.
National pride doesn’t mean being right-wing or racist – it’s simply pride in your nation.
Fuller's get it. The brewer runs great ads, by DCH, with emotive words from Shakespeare’s Henry V: ‘Once more unto the breach dear friends. Once more’. Stirring stuff.
The BBC even get it. It’s ads tell viewers that in the 6 Nations you don’t play the team, you play the nation.
But, it would seem, some Daily Telegraph readers just don't get it.
After the mediocrity of the past 1,2,3,4,5…6 years (yes, it really has been that long) England’s mauling of the French last week should have brought universal outburst of euphoria and optimism. Not so.
The players exuberant try celebrations were ‘grotesque displays of trumphalism’ to one reader. ‘The extravagant behaviour of some England players at Twickenham last week directly reflectss the extravagance of their new strip’, whimpers Vincent Gormally of Parbold, Lancashire.
Hardly. That Delon Armitage would kiss the English rose after scoring a great try against our arch rivals is hardly a hanging offence.
Let’s face it – it was not comparable to the increasingly ridiculous Robinho kissing the Manchester City badge after scoring against Chelsea just days after accidentally declaring his joy at signing for Chelsea….errr Manchester City. D’oh.
