Guerilla Marketing Effort Stripped Down

FIFA goes a long way to protect its sponsors, who invest ridiculous amounts of money into the World Cup. In fact, they struck down a guerilla marketing effort by forcing Dutch fans to take off their clothes, forcing them to watch the match in their underwear.

Many Dutch fans wore garish orange lederhosen to the match against the Ivory Coast that bore the logo of Bavaria, a Dutch bewery. The ridiculous outfits were part of a guerilla marketing effort by the brewery.So when stewards at the stadium wouldn't allow anyone into the stadium wearing the branded threads, many Dutch fans watched the game in their underwear.

The sponsor FIFA sought to protect was Budweiser. So far there has been no comment from Bud, but the Dutch brewers say that FIFA wen to far. However, I say the incident creates more publicity than the guerilla effort would have produced. So instead of preventing the brewery from making a splash at the World Cup, FIFA has put them in the news throughout the world.