There has been a scandal at the World Cup and no it doesn’t involve a dodgy penalty decision or some kind of WAG swapping saga. Instead it centres on a group of around 30 scantily clad Dutch ladies who were removed from a game and arrested. Yet it wasn’t their lack of attire that got them into trouble… the crime was them taking part in the dark arts of “ambush marketing”. So what exactly is ambush marketing? Basically, it’s a marketing campaign that takes place around an event but does not involve payment of a sponsorship fee to that event. That means companies taking part in such sneaky tactics benefit from free association while also reducing the effectiveness of any rival brand’s connection to the event.

Read more…

Whilst catching some Xmas sunshine it was really interesting to see how South Africa is preparing for the 2010 World Cup in particular in the many townships.

The FNB is the national bank of South Africa a major sponsor of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, and in line with its sponsorship of the much-anticipated event, is transforming the skyline of several of the host cities. With some larger than life outdoor building wrap advertising campaigns in some of South Africas largest townships.

The most striking of these building wraps had to be the ones that I saw on my visit to Soweto – the largest township in South Africa. Here two of the four huge cooling towers, which belong to a currently decommissioned power station, carry FNB’s 2010 Fifa World Cup branding. The artworks are reproduced on canvas – about 12 800m2 of it – and the wraps weigh between 700 and 900kg each. Apparently the whole project took 12 000 litres of paint, and it took the team 720 hours each to complete their sections. Each tower is 60m high with a circumference of 120m at the bottom and 70m at the top.

Read more…