‘History will be made’, states the BBC’s World Cup trailer. It’s a pretty emphatic claim. Will it, definitely? And does it work as a strapline? Yes and yes are the answers to those questions. Here’s why.
Those four, well-chosen, words capture the precise reason why watching the World Cup is so captivating and electrifying. Because if you follow from start to finish you can be confident – no, stone cold certain – that by the end of it you will have seen something play out in real time that will go on to be repeated on our screens for many years into the future. Probably long after we, ourselves, have left the field of play. Like, say, totally at random….
Tardelli’s rapturous celebration in the ’82 final…
Van Persie’s meme-triggering Superman header at the last World Cup…
Or, inevitably, Carlos Alberto’s peerless thunderbastard from Mexico 70…*
*(Here it is from the reverse angle, fellow geeks)
These are all stand-out moments from World Cups gone by which are now part of the football fabric. We don’t just recognise these touchpoints from tournaments past, we expect to see them every time this footballing jamboree rolls around. And at any other time too. Many of us can remember watching them happen, on our TV screens or in the stadiums, with our own eyes, and we have now willed them into eternity through our mutual and mass comprehension. Over and over again, over all those years.
And it’ll happen again at this World Cup. Right now, we’re enjoying the delicious anticipation. The point where the who, when and what it means are all yet to be revealed. Which player, what match, which team. Whose tip-over into tragedy, whose tale of triumph.
So, well done BBC. A purposeful and pitch-perfect strapline that made me stop, take notice, think and agree. Up to 3.2 billion tuned in to the last World Cup and I see no sign of those figures dipping this time around. Nearly half the global population is watching the world’s most popular sport. It’s inevitable: history will be made.
Richard Ellis Communications 