Is world cup sponsorship worth it?

This is despite FIFA's almost draconian ambush marketing regulations that are made even more stringent by being backed up by the laws of the land.

Hardly exclusive

Take MTN, for example. It's an official sponsor that paid a fortune for the exclusivity and privilege of being seen to be the sole cellular network of the 2010 World Cup.

Trouble is, its biggest competitor Vodacom just happens to be a long-time sponsor of Bafana Bafana and was perfectly entitled to run an aggressive advertising campaign, based on support for the national team.

Vodacom did not have to every mention "2010" or "World Cup" or any of those restricted words and phrases, with the result that I'll bet that if ordinary South Africans were polled right now on the official 2010 World Cup cellular sponsor, the result would not be anything like overwhelmingly in favour of MTN.

In fact, even the most cursory look at marketing activity in the media and on the streets, these past few weeks, has shown a massive amount of advertising that on face value has nothing to do with the world cup but, given the environment in which it is appearing and the massive public hype around the world cup, most would overwhelmingly be associated with the competition.

Just having the now globally familiar colours of the South African flag as a background to an ad would do the trick and get you on the bandwagon.

Bavaria stuffed it up

In terms of ambush marketing from a PR point of view, Netherlands brewer Bavaria got it wrong because its strategy was so painfully obvious. It also backfired when Dutch and European consumers, who make up the primary target market, saw a couple of innocent Dutch women being arrested while the company skulked out of sight in Holland. On top of which it has now has to agree not to try any stunts like that until at least 2022.

In spite of a lot of South Africans, for example, being delighted to see someone stand up to what they view as an overbearing FIFA, Bavaria really didn't achieve anything much.

South African low-cost air carrier Kulula.com has done a lot better and in my opinion has won the battle against FIFA by ending up as the good guys having outsmarted the bad guys.

Brand association

This also brings up another important point of all this sponsorship. The issue of brand association. There is no doubt that, particularly in South Africa and certainly in many other countries, FIFA has become to be seen as a money-grubbing bully rather than the purveyors of sportsmanship and professionalism. And by association, those seen to be part of the FIFA family, such as the major sponsors, must surely have been caught in the crossfire of negative public opinion.

FIFA has made a complete muck of the ticketing process and have come down extremely hard on anyone, mostly little people such as restaurants, shops and street vendors, who stepped out of line in terms of the ambush marketing issue.

One wonders how, for example, the FNB bank brand has been affected? First of all, by the ticketing chaos where FNB branches were the scenes of frustrated queues of people. And then due to the fact that, like Vodacom, Absa Bank was able to get in on the act due to its long-term domestic soccer sponsorships?

Even Standard Bank has been able to conjure up ads without getting on the wrong wide of the FIFA regulations.

Impunity

Frankly, the 2010 World Cup has demonstrated without doubt that, with few exceptions, it is possible for non-sponsors to get in on the act with relative impunity.

All of which would make me wonder, if I were a potential sponsor for the 2014 World Cup, whether I would actually bother to pay the massive premium rather than take my chances playing on the clearly lucrative sidelines?

Marketing today is all about return on investment and efficiency of funds employed. When the final calculations are done, it is going to be interesting to see just who the really clever marketers were.

For more:

• FIFA.com: Official partners, sponsors, supporters and campaigns
  
• The Daily Maverick: FIFA to give up prosecuting orange minidresses
  
• Marklives!com: Sepp Blatter flies Kulula