I said, ‘did you hear about that sponsor?’
The benefit of a World Cup blog is that you can hear it over the vuvuzela.
Most of us had never heard of the plastic trumpets two weeks ago, and now we hear nothing but them. Bringing the beating heart of African football into our homes or annoying the hell out of us, the English press are divided, and so are our panel of World Cup Watchers.
The big question: Do we embrace everything African in this footballing extravaganza, or do we impose restrictions to allow everyone else to be heard including the Brazilian Samba and the England Supporters Band to mention just two deprived groups?
If you ask our panel they’ll tell you the Slovakians and English are turning the sound down on their TVs, and the Portuguese are buying ear plugs. But, the South Africans and Nigerians are loving every minute of it, and the Greeks are even buying them as souvenirs.
A souvenir? That got me thinking… We’ve embraced ‘The Wave’ from Mexico ’86 and we love a bit of ticatape from Argentina ’74, so why not the vuvuzela? A quick look on eBay later, and I was petrified; they’re not only cheap, but being sold out of Slough and delivered within a few days.
Football fans all over the globe beware; vuvuzelas are coming to a stadium near you. But has anyone got the balls to sponsor them?
TicTac, maybe? They’ve decided that being an official sponsor of Fifa is probably a bit extreme and have instead decided to get on board in an unofficial capacity with the England Supporters Band. Certainly, that’s one way of generating a lot of brand noise. But do World Cup Watchers actually care? Do we wait with anticipation every four years for the final list of World Cup sponsors to be released? Who’s made the cut this time? Who has narrowly missed out?
Nike’s ad launch has been hugely popular (I’ve had it e-mailed to me five times already) – despite disrespecting our monarchy and thus only being shown in an edited version on anything but the internet. And they’re not even official World Cup sponsors. We don’t care if it’s ambush or official… not one iota, as long as it’s entertaining, captures the occasion, and parades our sporting heroes.
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