World Cup Brazil 2014

CBF, the Brazilian Football Confederation, will file lawsuits against several Brazilian corporations for the practice of  ambush marketing, “a marketing campaign that takes place around an event but does not involve payment of a sponsorship fee to the event”; the event, in this case, is the World Cup 2010.

On May 26th, it was announced that CBF would start action against Claro, TIM, Café Pelé, Banco Votorantim, GM, Mastercard,  Hyundai, MRV Engenharia, Samsung, Walmart, Ipiranga, ALE, Ponto Frio, Ricardo Eletro, Casas Bahia, Diário de S. Paulo, Magazine Luiza (all these companies are multi-million or multi-billion dollar companies),  Noova Produtos Promocionais, Ponto Inicial Brindes, The Leadership Group, Chevrolet Américas Barra, Prensa Popular, Definitive 1 and Perfumaria Ribeiro Box.

Today, June 2nd, the following companies, all big corporations, were added to the list: Caixa Econômica Federal, Aguardente Ypioca, Telefônica, Olympikus e Supermercado Guanabara.

These companies, in their marketing campaigns, made references to the expression “World Cup”, and/or exhibited someone wearing the Brazilian uniform. Below, a movie in which Robinho advertises a Volkswagen car:

Several of the above companies are direct competitors of the official sponsors of the Brazilian team; FIFA and CBF claim they have to take strong measures to protect the interests of such sponsors.

This kind of action is unheard of in Brazil until recently. In November of 2009, FIFA lawyers started sending warning letters to companies using the trademark World Cup (by then, FIFA had already registered nearly 30 expressions, marks and logos with INPI, the Brazilian Institute for Intellectual Property).

The outcome of such suits is still hard to predict – but they will certainly establish a jurisprudence for the World Cup 2014.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 at 5:53 pm and is filed under business, cbf, fifa.