'Interesting' news from the World Cup here. A bunch of girls wearing short orange dresses, have been arrested while attending one of the world cup matches. Some have been roughly handled by the police, even threatened with up to 6 months in jail. Their crime? Advertising 'Bavaria' beer in contravention of an agreement of FIFA's that Budweiser should be the only beer sold or advertised in the World Cup stadiums. The girls 'smuggled in' the orange dresses under clothes apparently suggesting they were Danish supporters, which they then took off in the stadium, to reveal the orange skirts, which are similar to ones used in a Bavaria beer marketing campaign, and also carried small - only readable from very close up - BAVARIA logos. Now am I the only one who thinks that there's something funny going on when large beer corporations can make agreements with sports federations about advertising . and those agreements subsequently becoming LAWS OF THE LAND, for the 'breaking' of which people can get arrested by the police, roughly interrogated, threatened, put on trial, and imprisoned? And of course the instigator, High Low Schoolfeest Jurken Bavaria beer, is laughing all the way to Cocktailjurken 2012 the bank. FIFA and the police's heavyhanded handling of the women have given them more publicity than they could have hoped for, for a very small amount of money and effort invested.
I saw that, Willem. And read up on something called 'ambush marketing'. Apparently, this sort of thing creates incidents at world sporting events such as the Olympics. You're right, it's a very strange phenomenon. Now me, I wasn't watching. I'm sorry, I'm sure I could find it on the web. But I can't stand sports, especially footie. I'm too dumb to understand it, and I start yawning. The German sports news used to have something called 'goal of the week', and it made me laugh. I mean, every week, there it was - a ball went into a net, the goalie fell down, there was cheering. But it was somehow a unique event. It was over my head. While you all were watching people kick balls last night (and KB was explaining the Camus-football connection to me, which got me interested), Elektra and I were watching 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day', a (to us) fascinating film starring the ultra-talented Frances McDormand. Now, I didn't see any ambush marketing in that one. But sometimes films have 'product placement' - everybody's drinking a certain brand of soda, or the bad guys make their getaways in certain fast cars. I think those are duly paid for, though. The way I understood it, these sporting events are staged by organisations. And those organisations have to make the money to pay for them. Which means they need revenue they get from official sponsorships. So those beer people were doing something naughty, and they knew it. The girls in the orange dresses were naive dupes of Bavaria beer's ambush marketing scheme. I'm not sure why the police would enforce these rules, though. The FIFA should have to hire its own goons, I would think. Isn't that what stadium security is there for?
Hi there again Dmitri! Heh heh I don't actually watch the soccer . at least, not more than a few minutes at a time. Yesterday evening my mom and I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on TV, and *while* we were watching they would send up a little message in the corner of the screen each time one of the teams that was playing at the time - it was Cameroon and Denmark - scored a goal. And when there were advertisements on, we would quickly switch back and see what was going on with the soccer. I didn't really care who won. I like the Danes a lot, but Cameroon is here in Africa (and when it comes to Nature and wildlife, a spectacular country) and I'd have been happy if they won. The thing with the ambush marketing is this: an agreement between Fifa and a beer company ought to be between those Lange Avondjurken partners and as far as they can control things. It ought not to involve the general SA public, and the police, and the courts. FIFA has a certain degree of control over the stadiums and what goes on in them, but as I see it they should not have absolute control over the public that comes in and out of those stadiums. Nobody in this country voted for FIFA to give them the power of making laws affecting us. Even if FIFA had absolute control over the inside of the stadium during the time when the games are being played, or even for the entire duration of the World Cup, when people left those stadiums, OR when the World Cup was over, they should be back in South Africa with 'our' courts, laws, police, Constitution etc. that are there to protect the rights of our country's people. Even accepting that FIFA and the companies it has made agreements with, have the right to throw people out for wearing the wrong clothes . those girls getting roughed up by the police, put in cells where they might be abused by fellow-prisoners, and threatened with imprisonment . that is just absurd. I mean, they could have taken them out of the stadium and left it at that. Well anyways! You say Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a good movie? I wanted to take it out for me and my mom to watch already . when it again is video-time I'll certainly keep it in mind - thanks for that Dmitri!
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