The main piece of excitement in the South African World Cup came not on the field, where England scraped through to the knock-out, but in the stands. The brewery that brought in three dozen “spectators” dressed in its corporate colour has given a new boost to ambush marketing.

Should we congratulate Bavaria on adding zest to the football tournament or condemn the Dutch company for a marketing trick that is below the belt as well as below the line?

Ambush marketing is mainly associated with sports events, if only because such events are mainly associated with sponsorship. Originally – in the early 1990s – it meant a company taking prominent poster advertising around the stadium even though a rival had paid to be official sponsor of the same product. It soon developed into companies getting their logos for unsponsored items into the grounds – on players clothes, for instance – or handing out samples of unofficial products.

But while it may be a fringe activity, it involves the biggest global companies. Ambush battles have raged between Kodak and Fuji, Pepsi and Coke and the Nike, Adidas and Puma sportswear rivals. Colgate-Palmolive tried it at Wimbledon.

And ambush marketing is now so common that organisers of major events persuade governments to legislate against it rather than rely on local trade-mark laws. London’s Olympics will be specifically protected, for instance. It is common too for tickets to be sold on condition they are not resold (thus stopping marketing agencies buying blocks) or used for commercial purposes.

Having sold sponsorship rights, organisers such as Fifa are keen to protect their income by blocking ambushers. For South Africa, Budweiser has paid to be the official beer and Bavaria’s stunt makes its rights less valuable. The lager that Fabio Cappello allowed the England team to drink before the Slovenia match was no doubt Carlsberg – one of his team’s sponsors.

Some see ambush marketing as theft. Yet paying a phalanx of girls to wear orange skirts and tops is not the first time Bavaria has clad football fans in its colours - it supplied orange shirts and shorts to fans at Euro 2008, for instance - and it is now questionable whether this works as a marketing trick. Orange has become the Dutch national colour: rather than wave the red, white and blue of its national flag, the country has adopted the carrot hue to represent everything Netherlands – including its sports teams.

It no longer matters if Bavaria borrowed its marketing from the House of Orange or the fans’ clothing was inspired and donated by a brewery. Supporters of Holland wear orange anyway and the colour is no longer identified specifically with a commercial brewer. Dutch bank ING is one of many other companies using orange as its corporate colour because it is the national colour.

Indeed, Bavaria’s South African coup was not ambush marketing but public relations. Nevermind the viewers who saw the 36 distinctively-dressed girls before they were ejected, the news coverage of the stunt was worth far more. And the irony is that rather than pay the girls to subtly promote the beer, dozens of would-be fans would have paid Bavaria to wear orange in return for a free ticket to watch the match.

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