The orange mini dress mess – Ambush marketing at the World Cup

Thirty-six female Holland fans were thrown out, and put in jail, of their country's game against Denmark at Soccer City after Fifa officials accused them of wearing orange mini-dresses to promote an unlicensed beer brand.

The group of "innocent" girls arrived at the match dressed as Danish supporters, but soon stripped off their red and white gear to reveal orange mini-dresses marketed by the Dutch brewery Bavaria.

          

Barbara Castelein shows the tag of her dress during an interview outside the Soccer City in Johannesburg, Dutch brewery Bavaria NV.

Companies such as Budweiser pay millions to have their names attached to the World Cup, and FIFA has plenty of incentive to protect its sponsors,  almost $300 million worth.

Official sponsor Budweiser is the only beer company allowed to advertise within Fifa venues and Fifa fiercely protects its lucrative marketing interests. "We view ambush marketing in a very serious light and we urge people not to embark on these ambush campaigns," police said in a statement. 

Naturally, Bavaria beer is far from heartbroken at this high-profile outcome, with a spokesman observing of the logo-less dresses: "Fifa doesn't have a monopoly on the colour orange."

Here is a video of the babes in action, everyone loved them...

Another case of world cup clever ambush marketing i previously wrote about can be found here, some of you might remember it.

So who won, Fifa or Bavaria?