Cristiano, Messi and the accidental endorsement
Last week we wrote about the Barcelona Effect and used as a example a photograph posted by the Catalan team that had given very valuable exposure to Avia Energías, SD Eibar’s main sponsor. This can also happen with the social channels of important players and sometimes they accidentally endorse brands that are not sponsoring them.
For instance, Cristiano Ronaldo has been one of the top Nike athletes for years, but he plays for Real Madrid, a team sponsored by Adidas. In fact, the best-selling Real Madrid shirts are those bearing the name of Cristiano. That means that he’s generating income for Adidas while sponsored by their direct competitor.
It’s relatively common for the Portuguese striker to share images on his social channels where he gets valuable exposure for Adidas. This image shared on Instagram by Cristiano on October 12th has earned over one million Likes and more than 8,000 comments. Adidas would have needed to pay about 489,000 euros to buy that kind of social visibility!
Something extremely similar happens with Leo Messi. He’s sponsored by Adidas, but plays for FC Barcelona, sponsored by Nike. Once again, Messi’s social channels are full of visual impacts for Nike, as in this photograph posted on Facebook that has been shared 9,700 times and has received over 8,000 comments and over 600,000 Likes.
Of course, neither of them mentions the rival brand or use their official hashtags, but they can’t avoid sharing the logo they wear daily when training or playing. Our brand detection technology spots said logos in both images and videos and calculates the value of that exposure. The alternative to our service is reviewing hundreds of social posts one by one, which is slow, expensive and remarkably inefficient.
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