Sweden get the credit without wild card Zlatan

ONE of the heart-warming aspects of Sweden’s success is that it was done without Zlatan Ibrahimovic (below), their wild and crazy superstar who has been developing his wild and crazy brand by representing Visa in their World Cup campaign.

About that brand, it really gained its lustre with the Zlatan autobiography, which established him as a maverick genius with an hilarious line in egotistical posturing — though in fact much of this persona was made up by the ghostwriter, just to keep himself entertained on those long, boring Scandinavian nights, pretending to be Zlatan.

With their maverick genius lining out for a credit card company, perhaps the journeymen who were left in the Sweden squad have been drawing inspiration from that ad campaign, which, with a savage poignancy, is based on Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).

But perhaps the Visa corporation itself put it best: “We created the campaign in somewhat of a modular way, such that we can support the key priorities and initiatives at a market-by-market level, while it still ladders up to a global campaign and a global theme about how Visa enables you not to have FOMO.”

Yeah, they had it all figured out…