With 52 years of experience making World Cup sticker books, trading card company Panini America begins planning for the next installment of soccer’s largest event as soon as the latest one ends.
Panini has sold a billion packets of stickers worldwide featuring player photos and team logos in 10 different languages using that approach. Unfortunately, a four-year runway leaves lots of room for obstacles.
“In 2018, we had a plan to really highlight the U.S. team and push [top U.S. striker] Christian Pulisic as an exclusive Panini athlete, with all his autographed memorabilia for us out there on our website,” said Jason Howarth, Panini America’s vp of marketing. “This was gonna be our launch pad for Christian, and then they didn’t qualify for the tournament.”
It was a tremendous setback for U.S. men’s soccer, which had appeared in each World Cup from 1990 to 2014, but it turned into a four-year delay for Panini.
When you’re trying to sell a 20th Century book of paper and foil to tech-addled audiences more than two decades into the 21st Century, any setback can seem like a game changer. But Panini America’s marketers have been adding young faces, streamers and new tech toys to the team while dipping into the most reliable pages of their decades-old playbook. The result is a multimedia approach that sticks with a multigenerational audience without getting stuck in the past.
Even before the U.S. team qualified earlier this year, Panini was prepared for any scenario. It gave away 2.6 million sticker albums and took a flexible approach to media buying going into the Qatar World Cup. With the U.S. assured a spot in 2026 as it co-hosts with Mexico and Canada, Panini’s marketing strategy is still not to get too far ahead of itself.
“This is a great launchpad for this team, because a lot of the guys on this U.S. national team are first-timers—even from a World Cup point of view—and in 2026 they’ll be back and will have gone through that experience,” Howarth said, adding the company is focused on 2022, but has an eye on 2026 because it’s “going to get here faster than we all think.”
Peeling away the past
When the World Cup didn’t work out for the United States in 2018, Panini leaned on its strongest supporters, made new friends and laid the foundation for 2022.
It brought in longtime brand boosters Telemundo, as well as Fox Sports host Fernando Fiore—who wears a suit jacket emblazoned with Panini stickers. With the U.S. absent, Panini approached Mexican supporters group Pancho Villa’s Army in 2018 and partnered with them during the World Cup.
In the lead up to 2022, Panini brought back Telemundo—this time with its streaming partners at Peacock and an ad in the sticker book—and launched its books with a sticker trading event at Telemundo headquarters in Miami. It also signed on as presenting partner for Fiore in his new role as host of beIn Sports’ Qatar Today.
Panini also brought Pancho Villa’s Army back into the fold, while also inviting their U.S. counterparts—the nearly 30,000-strong American Outlaws.
“The U.S. market for the World Cup is unique compared to the rest of the world, in that there are multiple teams that the U.S. audience roots for here,” Howarth said. “It’s not just about the U.S. team.”
Old school, new tricks
To keep that broad spectrum of fans covered, Panini America bought time as presenting partner for Men in Blazers’ World Cup livestreams of nine World Cup matches on Twitch. That covers all of the U.S. matches, as well as the semifinal and final.
In August, after the U.S. qualified for the 2022 World Cup, Panini brought together Pulisic and globally renowned trick-shot crew Dude Perfect to film a series of clips for the brand. This year, Panini is also offering NFTs among its sticker packs for the first time.
However, the focal point remains the 80-page, 670-sticker books and the $1.25 packs of stickers. While Panini’s made significant advances during the last 52 years, Howarth said it was still negotiating paper quantities and pricing in early 2022 to avoid supply chain issues.
Its media partners at Telemundo still resorted to old-school direct marketing by distributing sticker books through newspapers and youth soccer programs. While the books are still selling through CVS, Walgreens, Target, Walmart and elsewhere, Panini went directly to youth soccer organizations Got Soccer and Soccer Shots and gave athletes upwards of 400,000 sticker books.
While Panini America salvaged what it could from the 2018 U.S. World Cup absence, its marketers realize what they missed too well to forfeit any opportunities in 2022 or 2026.
“It’s a generational collection,” Howarth said. “You’ve got grandparents collecting stickers with their grandkids now who remember collecting them when they were kids.”
