Comment: This is the key to successful sports marketing

How is it that a split-second moment from a men’s World Cup game between Holland and Sweden back in 1974 still gets talked about today?

His back to goal, a Swedish defender blocking his path, Johan Cruyff feigned a pass, dragged the ball with his right foot back behind his standing leg, turned 180 degrees and glided away. The bemused defender continued going the opposite way for half a second before his brain computed what had just occurred.

50 years on, you can guarantee there’s a schoolyard, park or playground where the same Cruyff turn is being performed today.

That’s creativity for you. It can have a seismic cultural impact.

On Boxing Day just gone, 19-year-old Australian cricketer Sam Konstas made a split second decision as a 90mph cherry from Indian pace bowler Jasprit Bumrah hurtled towards him. He flipped round 90 degrees and scooped the ball over the wicket keeper’s head for six. Scarcely believable creative impudence. We’ll talk about it for years to come.

In sports marketing, sure, customer data will tell you how many sugars the average fan takes in her half time coffee. But it’s the unpredictable not the predictable that gets the big views on TikTok, that sparks the magic words ‘have you seen this?’, that creates ripples around the world and back.

Cruyff says ‘I never did tricks in training. I saw something and it just came out.’ Instinctive creativity.

See, for rights holders, sponsors and sports clubs, data gives marginal gains, but seismic leaps that change the value of investments only come from creativity.

Sometimes modern football can feel so control-obsessed that games feel predictable, even boring. Like when watching Pep’s Man City pass the ball endlessly from side-to-side, like a boa constrictor very slowly squeezing the life out its prey. It’s only when Kevin de Bruyne produces a piece of instinctive creative magic that we waken from our stupor.

Take the unexpected creativity of We Buy Any Car’s sponsorship of the Premier League. A viral sensation that sports fans adopted, resulting in tens of thousands of West Ham fans singing Just Sold My Car to Lucas Paqueta; or Thierry Henry’s walk through 23 years of Premier League moments for Sky Sports, becoming the fourth most watched video on the entire global internet (beaten only by two Chinese music videos and a surfer punching a shark), and resulting in the brand’s biggest upturn in subscriber numbers for a decade; or for Grenfell Athletic FC, a grassroots football club, a kit made of fabric that survived the horrors of the Grenfell tragedy, resulting in unprecedented kit sales for a non-league club and partnerships with Cadbury, Soho House, and TNT Sports. Oh, by the way, we crafted all those moments.

In an age when data is the god that marketing worships, my argument may not be fashionable. But trust me, sports brands who channel the irrepressibly unpredictable creative spirit of Diego Maradona slaloming through defences in 1986, of Simone Biles contorting her tiny frame into unprecedented patterns, of Nick Kyrgios smashing the ball between his legs and laughing, will be the ones seared into our imaginations, who will move the dial in ways data can only dream of.

Andy Fowler is co-founder and executive creative director of Brothers & Sisters Sports Club