You’ve got to hand it to Bavaria Beer. They’re relentless and arguably quite clever marketers. Four years ago Dutch fans were made to remove their Bavaria-branded Lederhosen, leaving them to watch the World Cup in their underwear, causing a lot of buzz on and offline. And this year they’re at it again with a campaign that clearly is exploiting the World Cup.
Their 36 pretty young ladies wearing branded orange mini dresses, that had been given out as part of a pre-World Cup promotion, have certainly caused a stir. But as a result, their web traffic has shot up; the site is now the fifth most visited beer site in the UK after Carling, Cobra, Budweiser (the official/disgruntled World Cup sponsor) and Carlsberg. There has also been considerable chat on Twitter, Facebook and generally online meaning that this story has been nearly as big as the surprise losses by some of the key teams.
So is this fair? Not really – they haven’t paid for any rights to the World Cup. Was it a risk? Yes, it could have backfired. In fact two of the women, who were allegedly paid by Bavaria, were charged under merchandise acts/regulations. However, it has been heavily fuelled by the media, which has made the story a lot bigger than it originally should/could have been. And as a result, Bavaria are clearly benefitting and arguably receiving more publicity around the world than it would have done by a sponsor.