Where to Draw the Line?
Over the summer I was lucky enough to be in South Africa during the World Cup. While there I attended the match between Denmark and the Netherlands where Bavaria was accused of helping to organize 36 Dutch female fans to wear popular Bavaria orange dresses during the match. FIFA has gone over the top on numerous occasions with efforts to protect primary sponsorship rights, such as at the Germany World Cup many Dutch men were forced to watch a game in their underwear because the lederhosen they were wearing had the name Bavaria on it. In South Africa, fans were banned from wearing shirts for the two most popular South African football teams, the Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, because they are sponsored by Vodacom the telecom rival to the FIFA sponsor: MTN.
Bafana Bafana is also sponsored by Vodacom and therefore no posters or billboards could be put up with players from the South African football team wearing their shirts. Therefore all the advertising featured players wearing unpatriotic “Africa United” shirts, much to the disgust of the local population. The resulting press and anger generated over the Bavaria and Vodacom incidents only helped to increase their appeal to customers. This shows how guerrilla marketing can work if it is creative, but also how some of the sponsors such as MTN need to also be creative to compete and establishing their place in consumer’s minds.