Cyclists push for fizzy drink as Coke wheels out campaign

As an example of an unwieldy sponsor’s name before the title, many thought the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre couldn’t be beaten but now a new clunky corporate moniker has cycled into town.

Coke's no-sugar brand Coca-Cola Zero has paid €2 million for a three-year sponsorship of the successful Dublin bike share scheme and, from this week, the instantly identifiable blue bikes will be called (officially at least) the Coca-Cola Zero dublinbikes.

The name change will be supported by a PR and advertising push. The sponsorship will, according to Dublin City Council, permit a significant expansion of the bike share scheme, west as far as Heuston Station and east to Docklands.

How Dubliners – or, more particularly, the 42,000 regular users of the bikes – feel about becoming unpaid pedal pushing mobile advertising carriers for the global fizzy drink will be interesting to watch.

In the motoring world, celebrity brand ambassadors at least get a free car: Dublin Bike cardholders pay €20 a year. Or will they consider the expansion of the scheme and a multiplication of the number of available bikes as a fair trade-off?

The branding on the bikes as revealed last week is stuck on the rear wheelcover and is old-fashioned and clunky – unusually so for such a savvy global brand, though it had to work with the bikes’ existing design and livery.

The sponsorship process is at an earlier stage in Cork, Limerick and Galway where bike share schemes are to be launched from September by operator An Rothar Nua. The bikes in these cities will be called Coca-Cola Zero bikes from the off. That's if it all goes to plan. The greatest sponsorship show on earth at the moment – the Fifa World Cup – reveals how bamboozled consumers can be when it comes to brand recognition. In a survey conducted by the London-based Global Web Index at the start of the tournament, most consumers named Mastercard, Nike and Samsung as sponsors – when they're not. Overall, 38 per cent of people identified Mastercard as an official 2014 partner – not far behind the 42 per cent scored by actual sponsor Visa. It's easy to see why – Mastercard was a World Cup sponsor from 1990 until 2006 – and if a sponsorship is strong and long enough it sticks.

Ambush marketing

Also, in a superb example of ambush marketing, Nike and Samsung created two football-themed advertising campaigns despite having no official tie-in with the tournament though, in Nike’s case, it does have significant team and player investment.

Nike’s stunning TV ads feature big, instantly recognisable players including Ronaldo, Rooney and Neymar and so the brand was named by nearly a third of people in the UK and US as being a sponsor, as well as more than 40 per cent in Brazil.

Identifiable reason

Samsung was named as a sponsor by a fifth of those surveyed in the UK and a third in Brazil – its campaign features Ronaldo, Rooney and Messi.

A survey of US football viewers, by Brand Keys, showed similar results, with Nike once again assumed to be a World Cup sponsor. The brand “recalled” by most people as a sponsor was Gatorade although there’s an easily identifiable reason – the sports drink is heavy into sports sponsorship in the US and is the main sponsor of US Soccer, the sport’s governing body there.

Several brands have renewed their World Cup Sponsorships already, including Adidas until 2030 and Coke, Hyundai-Kia, and Visa until 2022.

In the GWI research, Coca-Cola (a sponsor since 1978) and Adidas (since 1970) are the most recognised World Cup sponsors, confirming the positive impact of being a long-standing partner. Coca-Cola had the best figures of all – it was selected by two thirds in the UK and USA as well as 85 per cent in Brazil.

Meanwhile, off the pitch, and back on the streets of Dublin, the coming days will see Coca-Cola Zero’s first push behind the Dublin Bikes sponsorship. They’re planning something big, according to a spokeswoman who wouldn’t say what – and while colloquially many now refer to the spectacular theatre in the docks as simply “the Bord Gais” it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever saying they’re going to ride a coke zero. Twitter: @BerniceHarrison