Soccer may have to earn stripes

Let’s call it Gwinner’s Law. In 1999, marketing guru Kevin Gwinner of Kansas State University proved the phenomenon of image transfer, writes Larry Ryan.

In his research document ‘Event sponsorship as a value creating strategy for brands’, Gwinner convinced us that “perceptions about a brand held in memory” are influenced by events that brand is associated with.

As he held up a mirror to reflected glory, among the relationships Gwinner tested was Camel cigarettes’ backing of the Fifa World Cup. And sure enough, Gwinner documented some bizarre malfunction of human nature which meant people were now more likely to use words such as “exciting”, “energetic”, “thrilling” and “youthful” to describe Camel smokes.