The World Cup’s most overused marketing asset isn’t a logo. It’s David Beckham

The Art & Science of Memorability

From Pepsi to McDonald’s, Adidas to Stella Artois, Beckham is everywhere this summer. But when every brand borrows the same celebrity, who actually becomes memorable?

There are certain people who become so famous that they stop feeling like celebrities and start feeling like part of the cultural furniture.

David Beckham is one of them.

As a Manchester United-supporting right winger growing up in the 90s, Beckham wasn’t just one of my footballing heroes. He was the footballing hero. I had the Predators. I spent entire summers trying to bend free kicks into the top corner. I can still picture The Face magazine cover, the free kick against Greece and the swagger that made him as famous off the pitch as he was on it.

Which is probably why something started to strike me during this summer’s World Cup.

Everywhere I look, there’s David Beckham.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. Beckham has been appearing in advertising campaigns for decades. Seeing him front a major brand is hardly unusual. But after a few weeks, it became impossible to ignore.

He was drinking Nespresso. Making coffee on a Ninja machine. Giving fans their say for Pepsi. Fronting Walkers. Playing cage football for Adidas. Modeling Boss. Celebrating with Stella Artois. It felt as though every marketer had looked at the biggest sporting event on the planet and arrived at exactly the same conclusion: if in doubt, hire Beckham.

To be fair, it’s not difficult to understand the logic. This is America’s World Cup. Beckham didn’t just play in MLS; he helped legitimize it. Today, he’s the co-owner of Inter Miami, the club that persuaded Lionel Messi to swap Paris for Florida. If you’re a global brand looking for someone who can connect football culture and American culture, Beckham looks like one of the safest bets in marketing.

The problem is that every marketer appears to have reached exactly the same conclusion.

Problem 1: When attention doesn’t become attribution

Advertising works when people remember the brand, not simply the celebrity. Yet the more frequently the same celebrity appears across multiple campaigns, the harder that becomes.

The other evening, I saw Beckham fronting a Pepsi campaign. Later that day, I saw him promoting McDonald’s collectible cups. Almost immediately, I found myself thinking about the relationship between the two brands rather than either campaign itself. Doesn’t McDonald’s serve Coca-Cola?

That’s the interesting thing about celebrity endorsement. I remembered Beckham perfectly. What I was less certain about was what each brand wanted me to remember. The celebrity remained crystal clear, while the brand associations became slightly blurred.

Marketers spend a lot of time talking about attention, but attention isn’t the same thing as attribution. Being noticed is only valuable if people can correctly connect what they’ve seen to the brand paying for it. Otherwise, some of the value inevitably leaks away to the person in the advert rather than the company behind it.

Problem 2: When endorsements start feeling rented

Viewed individually, most of Beckham’s partnerships make complete sense. These brands aren’t hiring him because they need help building awareness. They’re hiring him because he brings relevance, cultural currency and a level of fame that very few people on the planet can match.

The problem is that consumers don’t experience endorsements individually. They experience them collectively. During a tournament like the World Cup, where campaigns are compressed into a few short weeks, people see all of these partnerships at the same time.

As the same face appears across coffee, burgers, crisps, soft drinks, beer, sportswear and fashion, the nature of the endorsement subtly changes. The question shifts from ‘Why Beckham?’ to ‘How much did Beckham get paid?’

That’s a very different conversation.

The strongest endorsements feel earned because there’s a believable connection between the individual and the brand. The weakest feel transactional. The risk isn’t that consumers stop believing Beckham. It’s that they begin believing the partnerships a little less.

Problem 3: When everybody chooses the same shortcut

The biggest challenge, however, is uniqueness.

The best World Cup advertising has never been built solely on famous faces. It’s been built on distinctive ideas. The campaigns that survive in memory long after the final whistle tend to be remembered because they created something ownable; a story, a tone or an execution that felt unmistakably linked to the brand behind it.

Look at Paddy Power. Love them or hate them, nobody else could make their campaigns. The humor is theirs. The irreverence is theirs. The tone is theirs.

That’s what makes them memorable.

And that’s the irony of Beckham’s popularity. The more brands that hire Beckham, the more valuable Beckham becomes. Yet the more brands that hire Beckham, the less distinctive hiring Beckham becomes. What initially feels like a shortcut to memorability gradually becomes category convention.

None of this is a criticism of David Beckham. If anything, it’s a testament to the extraordinary strength of his personal brand. Three decades after bursting on to the scene, he remains one of the most recognizable and commercially valuable people on the planet.

The question is whether all those brands are benefiting quite as much as they think.

Because after a summer of World Cup advertising, one thing feels increasingly clear.

David Beckham is becoming more memorable.

I’m not convinced the brands are. And that’s the risk of borrowing fame. Fame gets you noticed. Memorability gets you chosen.

While every marketer at this World Cup seems to have reached for the same shortcut, the brands that will win in the long run won’t be the ones that rented the most famous face. They’ll be the ones that built something distinctive enough to be remembered without him.

Because, while every brand at this World Cup can buy David Beckham, very few are investing in building the kind of memorability that made David Beckham worth buying in the first place.

You can read The Behaviour Agency’s free Brand Memorability Hacks playbook just hit the button below.