By Okoh Samuel Ejime
After one of the Portugal’s matches at the ongoing European Nations tournament, Portugal’s Captain Ronaldo acted disrespectful to Coca-Cola during a press conference. He did this by removing bottles of Coca-Cola from the table. The argument here is that his action matters in brand and marketing communications as a realm of scholarship in Mass Communications. It was, in fact, a significant but poor move. It is so because Ronaldo failed to understand that the bottles were not there by accident but because Coca-Cola is one of the sponsors of the tournament. It is important for Portugal’s Captain to know that Euro 2021 is made great by sponsors and without the tournament, Ronaldo will not be at the competition to showcase his skills. This is more so that complete players are defined by their actions in and outside the football pitch because there is long life for football players after the playing career. Great players like Diego Maradona, Eric Cantona and back home, Etim Esin and others can tell us more about this.
It is important Ronaldo knows that Coca-Cola is a well known brand long before he was born and will still be popular and respected brand even in Portugal, the home of Ronaldo after he is long gone as a footballer. Ronaldo may wish to know that a great football player known as Pele of Brazil retired many years ago before Ronaldo was born and even after his 70th birthday, Great Pele still works with VISA CARD as brand ambassador. In Nigeria we have Jay Jay Okocha who keeps getting recognition end endorsement contracts years after playing the round leather game. Unfortunately for Ronaldo, Portugal – the defending champion is out of the on-going Euro 2021 which might be as a result of politics surroundings his disrespect to a sponsor. As a great player representing a country with good football pedigree, his team is expected to get sympathy from people but what is the guarantee now that some fans and admirers might not look the other way because of this behaviour?
In many countries, Manufacturers and advertisers who sponsor events like Euro 2021 have associations. In Nigeria, members of the Advertisers Association of Nigeria, (ADVAN), work together to protect the association’s common interests. Disrespect for one of them in the way Ronaldo did to Coke is likely to lead to denial of endorsement from any one of them again. An example of this played out few years ago in Lagos, Nigeria when an organisation invited a popular American artist called “50 Cent” to entertain alongside some home grown musicians. The misbehavior of one of the invited local artistes disrupted the event to the embarrassment the organiser and this also affected the career of this local artist.
One would like end this piece by advising skilful and great sportsmen, especially soccer stars like Ronaldo to note that there is life after football, and that the only thing that will help sustain respect, recognition and patronage for them is good behaviour that translate into goodwill.
The author is a lecturer with the Department of Mass Communications at Veritas University, Abuja.