Where is the 2010 buzz?

At the press conference, FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke said he was ‘astounded' at not seeing a single promotion of the Confederations Cup in and around Johannesburg: "There's nothing not even at the airport that shows you that this is Confederations Cup host city. It would be our worst Confed Cup if we have half-full stadiums... This is the dress rehearsal for the world cup and needs a lot of advertising and promotion locally. It is impossible to bring people to the stadium if we do not promote the Confederations Cup."

More enthusiasm from outside SA

LOC CEO Danny Jordaan slammed the fact that there has been more enthusiasm from countries such as Australia and Canada than from South Africa: “It is disappointing. It will be a poor show if television audiences see empty stadiums at the Confederations Cup. If the random draw for phase one tickets was to take place now, 750 000 tickets would go overseas and 500 would be left for South Africa."

So, what exactly has gone so terribly wrong that locals are shunning the Confed Cup tickets, with just three months to go to kick-off?

• User-unfriendly system: in a survey conducted by the Sunday Sun, 70% of respondents stated they had not applied for tickets yet, mainly due to the user-unfriendly process involved. Said Dingo Aphane from Kempton Park, “I want to go to all the stadiums and attend both the Confederations Cup and the 2010 World Cup. But I don't understand the system used to buy these tickets. I only know the process of going through Computicket.”

  While the process of procuring tickets has been designed to maximise branding mileage for one of the local sponsors (by driving traffic to FNB branches and issuing FNB-branded credit-card-like specimens in substitution for tickets), it forces the user to undergo a complex application process and read through eight pages of small print match schedules, ticket categories, ticket sales phases, ticket products, ticket prices, and ticket application guidelines, before being able to select the letters of the respective group teams, such as A3 vs A4 and B1 vs B3 (not knowing which teams are represented by the letters) and calculating the applicable price manually.

  Once completed, the prospective buyer has to hand in the application form and then wait for weeks before being notified of the outcome of their application.

• Sponsor inactivity: with the exception of FNB, which has been staging a number of 2010 events for the past two years, the FIFA World Cup sponsors - local and international alike - seem to be content saving their ammunition for the period post the Confederations Cup and hoping for a last-minute rush to the ticket booths.

  Unfortunately, such hopes could easily prove futile, as evidenced at the 2007 Cricket World Cup, when sponsors turned all their attention to sanitising the events against potential ambush marketing and neglecting to promote the games to the local population. Not surprisingly, the ICC event was characterised by small crowds and a lack of atmosphere.

  Said Caribbean cricket analyst Tony Becca, "The world cup was not promoted as a West Indian World Cup but as a world cup for the world... They went for North American tourists so much that they ignored the local population... I kept telling them that all the world cups I've been to, the majority of the crowd has been local."

• Intangible legacy beyond the game: while FIFA is working hard to create a soccer legacy on the continent, local government has failed to spell out what exactly 2010 will mean for the man in the street in terms of economic benefits.
  While the 2006 World Cup brand promise “A Time to make Friends” tapped into the collective unconscious of the ordinary German citizens who were dying to prove to the world that they could be great people, and not just great engineers, the 2010 brand promise to “Celebrate Africa's Humanity” has not yet been translated into a compelling value proposition that engages South Africans emotionally - and at the same time spells out the benefits the nation will reap from an improved international image.

Will advertising suffice?

At the end of last week's LOC press conference, Valcke stressed that the LOC had appointed a signage company to promote the Confed Cup. But will advertising suffice to drive ticket sales up dramatically over the remaining 90 days?

According to Simon Anholt, the author of the quarterly Nation Brand Index, “one can compel people to do most things, but one cannot compel them to be enthusiastic; and an enthusiastic population is a prerequisite for building a powerful international reputation.”

Rather than beautifying the packaging of the Confed Cup, we have to make sure that the product is not only user-friendly but also compels South Africans emotionally to get involved in 2010.