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Analysis: Lululemon scores as yoga beat soccer

Aborted Burrard Bridge event benefited crafty sponsors

Om the Bridge is off the calendar, but it stole attention from the biggest event to hit Vancouver since the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Sponsors Lululemon and AltaGas, by luck or by design, were engaging in a soft form of ambush marketing in the city that hosts nine FIFA Women’s World Cup matches, including the July 5 final.

“These guys pulled this off pretty nicely,” Simon Fraser University marketing professor Lindsay Meredith told the Courier after a public backlash cancelled the June 21 event.

“The only brand that took a hit on this was Christy [Clark]. Did they get better coverage than FIFA? I would say so. They didn’t pay a bloody penny for it either.”

On June 5, the eve of the Women’s World Cup kickoff, Premier Clark announced the $150,000 plan to close the Burrard Bridge for seven hours to celebrate the first International Yoga Day. Later on June 21, Canada's national team is hosting a round of 16 match against Switzerland at B.C. Place Stadium, where logos of sponsors like German sportswear giant Adidas and Russian state natural gas company Gazprom are displayed on pitch-level signs. The B.C. government contributed $2 million to be one of six FIFA host provinces for scandal-plagued FIFA.

Gazprom’s 30-year, $400-billion deal in 2014 to export natural gas to China via pipeline dealt a blow to Clark’s ambition to ship B.C. shale gas to China. Calgary’s AltaGas is a partner in two B.C. north coast liquefied natural gas proposals with Japan’s Idemitsu.

Adidas supplies FIFA game balls, outfits tournament volunteers and the German and Japanese national teams. It also boasts a yoga division. Kitsilano-based Lululemon’s 2014 annual report stated: “We are in direct competition with wholesalers and direct sellers of athletic apparel, such as Nike, Inc., Adidas AG and Under Armour, Inc.”

Adidas Canada category brand planner John Febbraro said “no comment” and a FIFA representative, who declined to be named, said no FIFA permission for the Burrard Bridge event was needed because the bridge was away from B.C. Place and there was no apparent claim of commercial association with FIFA or the Women’s World Cup.

FIFA’s agreement with City of Vancouver bans marketing activities in a so-called “controlled area” directly adjacent to the stadium’s outer perimeter. That would explain why Lululemon and AltaGas didn’t sponsor the International Yoga Day event planned for the Plaza of Nations. The Burrard Bridge was the only False Creek span without the Women’s World Cup banners bearing logos of Adidas, Gazprom and other FIFA sponsors.

Meredith said it should be no surprise that FIFA and Adidas would shy away from commenting. A negative reaction would make them appear “like greedy bastard foreigners” and play into the hands of publicity-hungry Lululemon.

“Lululemon has had a history of making a lot of advertising gains all based on controversy, whether it was having nude access to their stores, whether it was [founder] Chip Wilson talking about fat women and Lululemon pants,” Meredith said. “In the end that name keeps getting out there and keeps getting mentioned.”

Lululemon famously enraged Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics organizers with the cheeky “Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 and 2011” line of hoodies and toques. VANOC’s attempt to protect official clothing sponsor Hudson’s Bay Company backfired.

Lululemon’s global public relations director Kate Chartrand did not address the question of ambush marketing and said executive vice-president of brand and community Duke Stump, a former Nike executive, was not available for an interview.

bob@bobmackin.ca

@bobmackin

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