This year, the football-loving world will turn its sights on Russia, where the 2018 Football World Cup will be held. As the teams and fans are gearing up to make the remaining three months go by faster, sponsors of teams are beginning to present their ideas.
Among the first to do is Mercedes-Benz, the official sponsor of the German national football team. Inadvertently, some of the posters released on Wednesday by the carmaker as part of the support it offers to the football team could cause some backlash.
The campaign is called Best Never Rest and is currently underway on social media and in-stadium communications. The idea behind the campaign was to communicate to the world the connection between the ideals of the football team – one of the best the world has ever seen – and the carmaker.
For the most part, the posters released today are as dull as they come, showing national football stars in various Mercedes-logoed backdrops. But the main poster, the one showing five players and a Mercedes C-Class, rings some nasty bells.
Call us crazy, but the choice of colors, the position of the players and the car at the bottom are stinkingly similar to World War II posters. Using only your imagination, exchange the red, yellow and black for red, white and black, the footballers for soldiers and the C-Class for a Panzer and there you go.
As most of you know, Germany and Russia have not-so-long-ago been foes of unparalleled dimensions. Scars still run deep on both sides, and now that one is expected to visit the other in large numbers for a sporting event, tiptoeing is a must for both.
The poor choice of a poster could have been made worse by a series of comments from Mercedes officials which may be poorly understood by some advisers of a recently re-elected president.
"Always keep on moving, keep on fighting, don't rest on your laurels - this is what THE TEAM stands for, and this is what we stand for," as Jens Thiemer, Mercedes-Benz’s vice president of marketing said.
We attached below the full press statement that came with the photos.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
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