Visa Inc (NYSE:V) Chief Brand Officer Antonio Lucio explained in a recent interview with CNBC why the company chose to feature Nobel Laureates in an advertisement for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
According to the Visa Inc (NYSE:V) executive, the ad shows the beauty of sports and particularly football. He said that people are united in the passion for football and the rivalries which are inherent parts of the game. He explained:
“We thought, that in a moment where everybody is featuring athletes and friends, we had a chance to have Nobel Laureates actually expressing their passion for football showing that it is a universal feeling was a very good idea. We hope that is the case.”
Lucio was also asked about another ad featuring the controversial Zinedine Zidane in a restaurant. The executive was asked whether Visa Inc (NYSE:V) took into consideration Zidane’s now infamous head-butting incident. According to Lucio, Zidane is actually featured with Fabio Cannavaro of the team that won the World Cup at the time the incident happened. The company wanted to show through the friendly nature between Zidane and Cannavaro that although there are rivalries, people are united in the passion for Football, he said.
The Visa Inc (NYSE:V) executive was then probed as to how much they spent for this campaign for the World Cup, he declined to give an amount saying that their rivals would love to know how much they spent. Asked to at least reveal if the budget for this campaign is bigger or smaller than the budget for the last World Cup, Lucio said that the budget is the same but the allocations are different. For this campaign, the company is spending more on digital marketing, he revealed.
Watch the CNBC interview, plus the advertisements, below:
Shareholders in Visa Inc (NYSE:V) includes Natixis Global Asset Management’s Harris Associates which had 3.88 million shares, valued at about $838.28 million, by the end of March. Another shareholder is Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management which had about 3.44 million shares in the financial services company by the end of the first quarter of this year.
Disclosure: None
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