Ambush marketing gets the job done

2010-06-24 10:20

Last week, when I told a friend that I was going to the Brazil vs North Korea game, he responded that I had better not wear an orange minidress, or FIFA might arrest me.

He’s a football fan, I’m not, so I didn’t really know what he was on about, but I laughed politely and then resorted to Google. There I learnt that a couple of Dutch girls were arrested for “ambush marketing” – wearing the branding colour of Bavaria beer (which is Dutch, whatever the name might suggest) and apparently sporting tiny Bavaria logos on their minidresses (or not even, depending on which media report you listen to).

Over the next week, I watched as the story gained momentum. The girls were in jail, then bail of $10 000 had been posted and then finally the charges were dropped. Thank goodness for that, otherwise it would have been an even bigger PR mess for FIFA – not that they seem to mind.

I know that FIFA has rules around its sponsors, and I can understand that they have to protect them from being overshadowed by other brands. But by heavy-handedly bringing the law into the situation, and arresting people at a football game for – gasp! – wearing orange, they’re not painting themselves as the nicest of characters.

If they had simply and quietly removed the ambush marketers from the stadium and sent them home, the orange minidress probably wouldn’t be the joke of the tournament. The story wouldn’t have been picked up by the local and international media, and I probably wouldn’t even have heard about it.

Instead, FIFA has done Bavaria’s job very well for them. They have made themselves look mean, humourless and litigious – none of which are concepts that should be associated with a football tournament organiser or its sponsors.

The FIFA-associated branding message for Budweiser – their ubiquitous beer partner, as we learnt when we tried to meet a friend who told us she was at the Budweiser bar – could be something like “Enjoy Budweiser, or we’ll throw you in jail” or “Enjoy Budweiser, or feel the long arm of the law” or even “Enjoy Budweiser – anyone wearing orange will be removed from the stadium”.

Never mind the negative reflection on FIFA and everyone associated with it, the publicity garnered by Bavaria for their stunt is worth its weight in beer. Everyone’s talking about those orange minidresses. Bavaria is being seen as an innovative and naughty brand, while Budweiser gets lumped with the crystal palace of FIFA sponsors.

Sure, Bavaria shouldn’t put football fans and its own supporters at risk – and this is probably the strong message that FIFA is trying to send - but the publicity they have given to the opposition means that it will be worth trying to sneak orange-decked supporters into the next tournament as well.

I also think that there is some fairly shaky logic that prohibits the wearing of a particular colour at a football game – especially when the colour of Bavaria beer is also the colour of choice for Dutch supporters, making it tricky to draw the line.

- Georgina Guedes is a freelance writer. She’s supporting Ghana all the way – come on, do it for Africa!

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