The Suarez bite – the reaction of brands

Whilst football fans looked on in horror as Luis Suarez was feasting on yet another opponent, some of the biggest brands in the world were racking their brains as to how they could use this well publicised act to their advantage.

McDonalds, Mars and Nando’s and many more leading brands took to the social media site Twitter in an attempt to manipulate the amount of attention this ‘bite’ was receiving and use it as an advertising tactic.

It should be noted that this is not the first time Luis Suarez has been involved in such an incident, however neither of the two previous incidents received this level of worldwide media attention. 14 months ago, the Football Association found Suarez guilty of biting Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic and the attention it received by the British media was astounding. However, when Suarez repeated the offence on Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini in Uruguay’s final group game of this World Cup in Brazil, he had committed this foul act on the biggest world football stage that there is.

The impact of the latest Luis Suarez bite was reflected in the surge of viewers for the Uruguay v Italy match on ITV4. Around 700,000 people were watching Uruguay when the incident was mentioned during the bore-draw coverage of England v Costa Rica on ITV1. The peak figure on ITV4 jumped to 3.6 million as the incident was replayed.

The official Uruguayan twitter account for McDonald’s, which is an official FIFA partner, was one of the first to get in on the act, recommending to Suarez that “if he were hungry”, he should eat a Big Mac.

Listerine also took the opportunity to the post a somewhat amusing tweet, suggesting that they “recommend a good swig after grabbing a bite of Italian”.

In addition, beer company Bud Light tweeted a photo of a person attempting to bite the cap off of a bottle of beer and wrote, “relax, they’re twist off” along with a World Cup hashtag. This hashtag was used by a number of brands to increase the reach of their tweets.

However, it wasn’t all smiles and jokes for companies across the globe. Betting website 888poker has dropped Luis Suarez as its ambassador following the biting incident.

A statement on 888poker.com on Friday morning read: “888poker signed Luis Suarez following a fantastic season for which his achievements were widely recognised.

“Regrettably, following his actions during Uruguay’s World Cup match against Italy on Tuesday, 888poker has decided to terminate its relationship with Luis Suarez with immediate effect.”

Therefore, whilst McDonald’s and Co were revelling in the marketing opportunity which had arisen through the unfortunate incident, brands such as 888poke had an allegiance to Suarez, but still felt forced to cut ties with the footballer to reduce any further damage to their brand image.

Harry Jeffries