“Brand Police” to Patrol World Cup 2010

May 6th, 2010 | by: Daryl |

FIFA has outlined how it will protect its logos and sponsors during the World Cup. Basically there’s going to be a squad of “brand police” who will patrol around World Cup 2010 stadiums looking for anything that isn’t 1,000% official.

“We plan to have teams in each of the cities looking out… for brand hijackers,” said FIFA rights protection manager Mpumi Mazibuko. “We protect the brand that is FIFA,” he added.

Let’s look at this from FIFA’s perspective. They’ve sold World Cup rights to people like, say, Coca-Cola, and so it’s fair that Coca-Cola and no one else get to use the official World Cup logo on their fizzy brown drinks. All’s good. But this goes a little further. According to this story, FIFA sees its trademarks as:

“2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa”, “2010 FIFA World Cup”, ” FIFA World Cup”, “World Cup”, “World Cup 2010″, “Football World Cup”, “SA 2010″, “ZA 2010″, “South Africa 2010″, “Ke Nako — Celebrate Africa’s Humanity”, “Soccer World Cup” and “Zakumi”.

We know from FIFA’s battle with budget South African airline Kulula that they’re willing to treat any variations of those themes as hostile. If you didn’t click that link, Kulula’s “Unofficial National Carrier of the You-Know-What” advertising slogan was considered far too specific. Which is a bit worrying.

So pretty much any reference to the World Cup will result in a visit from the brand police. Anyone selling food, drinks or anything else around stadiums apparently can’t reference the reason everyone’s there in the first place, or else they’ll hear “Unauthorized logo! Swarm! Swarm! Swarm!”

OK, maybe it won’t be that dramatic. But there is a more serious point here. Companies like Coca-Cola are going to make fortunes from the World Cup. Small-time vendors are not going to put a dent in those profits. Factor in the idea that the World Cup might not be of any long term help to the South Africa economy, and the whole thing starts to feel very unfair.

Also, remember WorldCupBlog is 100% unofficial, so check no one is looking over your shoulder if you read us near a World Cup stadium.

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http://arsenal.theoffside.com Martin

Fortunately, there are still no “brand police” in NYC Chinatown, and you can still get “World Cup” jerseys for $25.00. God bless America.
alex

isnt a world cup suppose to make the countries economy better and not worse???

how the hell is a street vendor going to hurt coca cola’s billions??? or even (insert ur fav team) shirts??? ohhh…wait i forget

C-R-E-A-M

“dolla dolla bills yall”
Seth

I remember when Fifa made a big deal over WorldCupBlog using the World Cup logo. Frankly speaking, the current WCB logo looks so much better than that ugly, lesbian stick figure person that Fifa has.
realpirate

When Lord Voldeblatter and his gang of greedy vicious old men decended on Germany in 2006 they sued half the country over copyrights infringements.
” Bannmeilen ” ( restricted areas ) around all the stadions were rigorously inforced.
No one but them was allowed to make a buck – and I agree with @Alex here – small vendors take bugger all away from giants like coka cola.
You’d think they give a hoot for coming across like nasty, horrible bloodsuckers ? They don’t.
I would have loved to come to SA for the World Cup, supporting the Mannschaft…but guess what ? Flights, Hotels were only sold through fifa agencies, at prices I simply could not afford .
They’ve dropped in price now that the contingents have been given back by fifa ( who couldn’t sell them at the exorbitant money they were asking )- to late for me as like a good employe I had to finalize my plans for this summer in the begining of January.
I seriously loathe Blatter and his cronies for this.

@Seth : ” lesbian stick figure ” ???? you gotta be kidding me
sandrahn

That “lesbian stick figure” remark is bang out of order and pretty low-rent.

I remember a couple of incidents in Germany 4 yrs ago where fans were evicted from the stadiums for wearing t-shirts or carrying soda cans of brands that were not official sponsors.

In my naivete, I was shocked at this and had never heard of this type of corporate-stalinist policing at public events ever. Certainly I’ve heard of evicting people for wearing or carrying banners with offensive political slogans but FOR SHOWING THE WRONG BRAND NAME???

It’s remarkable that there isn’t more uproar about this sort of corporate fascism on FIFA’s part. Does this sort of thing happen at the Olympics or the Superbowl?