By Ingrid Daschner
Does the World Cup annoy me? Yes, I’m afraid it does. Of course it's understandable that the best minds in marketing will jump on any major, headline-grabbing event with parasitic abandon, however, when it comes to the World Cup, the whole undertaking is approached in such an artificial manner, it just really annoys me.
Every other marketing- or PR-related email now seems to try to contrive a link to football. Now, I don't want to tread on the toes of anyone's virtual football boots here, so I won't be naming any actual examples, but there are plenty of obvious candidates.
What on earth can we expect next? How about a security solution with the default password "Schweinsteiger" (that’s "Pig-Mounter" to the English)? Maybe a discount on 3D glasses if you can prove you’re eligible to play for the English football team? Predict the Algerian team's total number of corners and get ten percent off the price of a blue-ray burner? Or how about freeware speech synthesis tools capable of pronouncing the North Korean national line-up – all in an authentic regional accent?
Painfully forced. Or "dragged in by the hair", as we would say in Germany. And, as we all know from our pre-school days: it hurts to have your hair pulled. Indeed, this World Cup marketing ballyhoo causes me far more pain than any fluffed penalty.
Still, the thought of July 11th still gives me hope. Bearing in mind the words of the great Paul Gascoigne ("I never make predictions, and I never will"), I hereby predict that this circus will end on that date. (Which will also put an end to those pesky vuvuzelas and the eyesore of German flags stuck into every clapped-out old banger on our national roads.)It may, of course, end earlier. Much, much earlier.
Comments