No advertising? No way.
Hadyn originally posted this over at The Dropkicks, but since we used Wellington as the example (and the map looks so nice), it seemed appropriate to cross post it over here...
The gist of the story is that the International Rugby Board, in a bid to halt 'ambush marketing' around the venues for the 2011 Rugby World Cup (being held in NZ, didn't you know?), is requesting a 5km advertising ban around venues where games are being played. To quote Hadyn...
Now without any bias, that is downright in-frickin-sane!
...which is entirely right. Take a look at what a 5km non-advertising zone around the Stadium would actually catch...
...yep - pretty much the entire central city and inlying suburbs. Are all those dairies going to have to take down the hoardings of non-authorised soft-drink manufacturers? Will the buses have all their advertising removed for inner-city services? Oggi's gonna take down all their billboards? Methinks: No. Way.
If we can't see soft drink advertisments, then the terrorists win!
But seriously, didn't Pepsi do this to Coke at one of the Olympics (Either LA or Atlanta)? Like, plaster every available surface on the route to the stadium with ads for Pepsi since they weren't allowed inside? Nice.
Well if we'd done what others do and built our stadium out in the middle of fucking nowhere so that everyone had to drive there, there'd be no problem! Damn our car-hating (ha!) council!
And would this mean that I wouldn't be allowed to wear a low-cut top? And that we couldn't tell people about the Wellingtonista?
To be fair it now turns out that "ambush advertising" is considered to be advertising that uses rugby as a marketing tool. So if coke has the contract but pepsi has ads up with people playing rugby...look out!
...advertising that uses rugby as a marketing tool.
...which is not that uncommon in NZ, is it?
Those Milo ads, for one.
From TFA
Any ban would not affect adverts not claiming to have any link to the Rugby World Cup.
I like the map showing our city so sweetly condensed.
you think we have it bad, a few years ago some big american band tried to play in tel aviv on a saturday (the sabbath) night. they were sponsored by pepsi and because people turned up before night fall,(the end of sabbath)the rabbi's deamed it un cosher and pepsi was off the menu. the power of adverts.
ps its about the rugby, not the sponsors
It would be nice to have no advertising in that area... but this is the wrong reason to implement it.
am curious as to HOW FAR the rugby people might take this...
For instance if a fan turns up wearing MIKE and official sponsor is MADIAS will they let into "the zone" and then into the stadium...
far fetched? check out what happened to a group of Dutch fans who were denied entry to one of football's World Cup matches last year.
Somebody should build a reality TV series around the IRB. I'm sure it would be hilarious.