Sepp vs Dutch models. Who would YOU rather sit next to at the game?
The World Cup –or, to avoid getting me in trouble, the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ – has thrown out a few surprises so far. For me, the biggest one is how cagey many of the top teams have been playing, and how world football (I’m English, so don’t expect it to be called soccer) seems to be on much more of a level playing field than in previous tournaments.
Anyway, this is a marketing and PR blog, so I’ll get to the point. The biggest shock to me has been how vehemently FIFA has been defending its sponsors and going after any other unsanctioned company which has tried to do anything regarding the World Cup. First, a few months back, FIFA stopped South African airline kukula from calling itself “the unofficial carrier of you-know-what,” and even went as far as saying that the airline – remember it’s South African – couldn’t use the words South Africa, feature a photo of one of those damn vuvuzelas, or use the South African flag on its ads. While kukula was obviously being somewhat cheeky with its ads, it seemed that FIFA was really going a bit far.
The most recent incident took place at the Holland vs Denmark match, when 36 Dutch models turned up to the game wearing identical orange dresses, apparently supplied by Bavaria, a Dutch brewer. The dresses, from what I saw, had no branding on them. Also, don’t forget that the Dutch team is the “Oranje,” and probably about 80 percent of all Dutch fans in the stadium that day were wearing the same color. FIFA’s response? Kick them out of the game and have two of them arrested. I can see why FIFA may want to file a civil suit against Bavaria, but a criminal suit against two of the people involved seems incredibly disproportionate and seems to go against FIFA’s “Fair Play” ethos.
While it’s completely understood that FIFA and its sponsors need to protect copyright and ensure the sponsors get value for money, it seems that the PR backlash of this far outweighs the benefit for FIFA. In fact, if anything, it has only helped raised Bavaria’s awareness (which, if that’s what they were trying to do – goad FIFA into a high profile response – it was a great PR stunt). It also raises the question of how far FIFA is willing to go to support its sponsors to the behest of everyone else. I think fans should rebel by wearing shirts adorned with non-sanctioned companies’ logos to all the games. I’d love to hand out a load of Coors-branded T-Shirts at a game and see what the FIFA suits would do.
