Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer
R: Where does your business make its money,
obviously you have tangible aspects such as selling T-shirts,
but the intangible such as the brand association with,
say, the World Cup.
Uh, how lucrative is that for you?
Where do you make your money?
H: When with the sponsorship like that,
you have two different aspects,
you have the tangible and the intangible aspect
as you have mentioned already.
Of course we can already count
how many shirts we have sold
during the World Cup 2006 in Germany.
R: How many was it?
H: It was over three million replica jerseys
from all the teams which were competing, and our brand name,
it was 1.5 million just alone from the German Team.
We sold over or nearly 15 million balls
with the Teamgeist design
which was a special design for the World Cup 2006.
But this is a tangible asset.
But on the other hand,
you have so many millions and millions of spectators,
TV viewers who are seeing your brand permanently,
and then going afterwards into stores and buying your brand.
Of course this we can not measure and count.
But overall, I think that these investments
and as I've said before
when you see the performance of our company,
then this is really worthwhile,
and we do not calculate it and name it as a cost,
it is an investment into the future of our company.
R: In terms of sponsorship,
are you getting the returns now that you expected
when you signed up for these deals years ago?
H: Definitely. Because when you look to the last 10 years
and the development and the performance of our company,
then you'll have seen that
we have permanently grown our business.
And we went from one record year to the other,
and this is because we are investing
in the future of our business.
And an investment into a World Cup is not just for one year
whether there is a financial crisis or not.
This is a long-term investment in the brand building,
and into the performance of our future.
And therefore,
I'm absolutely convinced I would write this cheque again.