Rugby World Cup Goes After Strip Bar for Ambush Marketing

Brands including Microsoft, Land Rover, BlackBerry, and Toshiba have paid big bucks to be the sponsors of the Rugby World Cup, which is currently underway in New Zealand. The country and organization made a very big deal this summer about how they are going to do everything possible to curtail any little inkling of ambush marketing in order to protect the corporations that were shelling out to be officially part of the fun.

Now the RWC is getting its first test and it’s not from any corporate giant that has creatively found a way to sneak its logo into RWC matches. It’s from a strip bar.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that one such establishment in Wellington, NZ, sent out “scantily clad women in stilettos and ‘All Blacks’ uniforms emblazoned with silver ferns” to hand out two-for-one flyers to match attendees in the wake of the first match the town hosted during the event: South Africa v. Wales on Sept. 11.Continue reading...