One of the most prized assets for sports teams is the name of their home ground, and a massive benefit for a sponsor to have its brand inserted in the name of a stadium hosting FIFA World Cup matches. Despite forking out an arm and a leg, not all commercial partners will get access to this massive global audience however.

When the Argentina v Nigeria game kicked off in Johannesburg’s Coca-Cola Park last Saturday, you won’t have heard the TV and radio commentators referring to the soft-drinks company as the stadium’s sponsor, and newspapers refrained from mentioning it in their match reports.

Instead, media outlets used the ground’s original name, Ellis Park, which it was given in 1928 by JD Ellis, who owned the land on which it sits. In 2008, Coca-Cola paid an estimated £30m for the stadium branding, so why will it lose this just when the eyes of the world are turned toward it?

Coca-Cola is one of FIFA’s six official partners, each of which pays an estimated £86.9m for the privilege. Not exactly peanuts. In return, the company gets pouring rights at match stadiums as well as pitch-side advertising hoardings. Crucially, the premium paid by sponsors of football’s world governing body also secures them exclusive exposure, which is what prevents the stadiums from promoting their own tie-ups during the World Cup. Ironically, this ban extends to Coca-Cola’s naming of Ellis Park, despite the company’s relationship with FIFA.

Some branding works better then others, the United Arab Emirates branding of Highbury has been received well; but the Foster’s Oval anyone?

Recent research by Leapfrog shows that consumers will be pleased to know their favourite brands are home grown, and business should be keen to show off this fact.

Just over a quarter of people (26%) say they actively support British business because they want to keep money in the country. And 23% worry that if a brand is sold to a foreign company, it will lose its British identity. Understanding a product’s provenance is also a reason for 22% of people to buy British.

When people are out shopping, they like to see British brands on supermarket shelves, says research director Sarah Buckle. “There’s a nostalgia element to these associations – people have grown up with these brands,” she explains.

The research suggests Premier Foods-owned brands such as Hovis, Bisto and Oxo are synonymous with Britain. The UK-owned brands have been known to shoppers for several generations and the fact that they are still based in this country makes them favourites in a super competitive market. It seems we have a real connection with food, as it is food and drink brands that suffer most if they sell up to foreign owners. The survey states that 31% think it would negatively affect a food and drinks business if it was no longer a British company.

This distinction between British and foreign brands is a hazy one. Many brands that have overseas owners are believed to be British, for example 38% believe that Hamleys, which is part-owned by an Iceland bank, is wholly British owned. Buckle says that’s no surprise as the toy store is “synonymous with London”. Land Rover, which is owned by Indian company Tata Group, is also believed to be a British brand by 39% of respondents.

This is clear message that brands should try to remain as authentic as possible, with foreign-owned companies with UK heritage should not be hesitant to market their roots. Although many say they’re not happy Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury, if their British values and image maintain, consumers won’t even notice the change, let alone mind.

If you’re looking to use promotional products as part of your marketing campaign, then speak to Gift Selection about which promotional items are made in the UK. Most promotional items are imported from the Far East, and then personalised here in Britian, but there certain items which are completely made in the UK.

The popular St George promotional mug (see image), is one of the few branded mugs that is completely made and printed here in England. If you want to get your typically British message out on people’s desk, contact the friendly team over at The Mugstore who will be happy to talk mugs!

Promotional products can be of one aspect of a marketing strategy for practical any organisation. If done well, they can be a great PR tool, which will raise the businesses profile to a great degree.

However your public’s perception of you can easily be blotted! Take the Conservative party for example, with their constant stream of PR stunts they hatch (watch David Cameron at home on Youtube – great), you’d think we’d all be voting blue this May.

More than a third of voters feel the Conservative Party’s reputation has been hit by recent stories about the tax s­tatus of deputy party chairman Lord Ashcroft. A PRWeek poll of 3,000 people found 51 per cent were aware of such stories. Some 37 per cent of people said the Ashcroft coverage had damaged the Tories’ reputation.

Quick, we’ll need more press released images of David Cameron in a polo shirt before we can forgive them for Lord Ashcroft’s antics!

Google hasn’t been out of the news of late, their recent controversy surrounds their lack of patience with the ever suspicious China. The internet giant has said it may end its dealings in China, after a “sophisticated and targeted” cyber attack originating from the country.

Google’s David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, made the big announcement on the Google blog. As it turns out, Google discovered that what first appeared to be a random cyber attack on their company, was actually a concerted effort against various organisations. The story took a darker twist as, Google claims that the primary target of the attack was the GMail accounts of Chinese human rights activists from all over the world.

Google did not accuse the Chinese government directly, probably as they are nervous of being kidnapped, but said they have said they are no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn.

Google launched google.cn in 2006, agreeing to some censorship of the search results, as required by the Chinese government. It currently holds around a third of the Chinese search market, far behind Baidu with more than 60%.

Controversial confectionery supplier Nestle has announced that Kit Kat bars will be Fairtrade certified from 2010. They have launched a print ad campaign to coincide with the certification, carrying the line ‘Have a break, have a Fairtrade Kit Kat’.

The ad explains Nestle’s on-going sustainability drive, ‘The Cocoa Plan’, through which it promises to invest £65m over the next 10 years to increase agricultural assistance, promote sustainable farming methods and improve social conditions for farmers working in the Ivory Coast.

Funnily enough it doesn’t mention their; marketing of processed cow’s milk as a substitute for breastfeeding, their connection with Robert Mugabe, selling of contaminated animal feeds, GM ingredients, child labour and price fixing. On the other hand their Kit Kat Chunky caramel bars are bloody good.

If you are looking for promotional chocolate items, that have to be specifically Fairtrade certified then this is something that sweets2order can help you with. They have a range of explicitly ethically manufactured chocolate items that are great for promotional use. The most popular is their branded Fairtrade hot chocolate sachets, which I think would make a great mailer for this time of year. If you have any questions at all about branded confectionery, contact the friendly team over at sweets2order.

Posh supermarket giant Waitrose has decided to pull the plug, on its UK TV Ads with Fox News (On Sky) after controversial comments from one of the channels leading commentators – Glenn Beck.

It was back in July, that Beck described President Obama as racist. His comments are laughable as he said the president’s reaction to the arrest of a black academic Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge, Massachusetts proved him to be “a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture. I don’t know what it is…”. Not exactly ‘proof’ surely, and when was he ever charged anyway?

A Waitrose spokesman said in a statement: “We take the placement of our ads in individual programmes very seriously, ensuring the content of these programmes is deemed appropriate for a brand with our values. His comments didn’t go unnoticed in America either as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Travelocity were three of several U.S companies to withdraw their advertising from Glenn Beck’s show because, the Guardian says, they feared becoming “tainted by association”.

This just goes to show how fragile the global world of PR and advertising has become, but a bit odd that this backlash has taken so long to come into effect.

The official “cool list” for hipsters to keep an eye on by Cool Brand’s, reveals a new but unsurprising champion in the shape of the Apple iPhone. Despite the so called credit crunch, the unprecedented success of the iPhone this year, which has sold five million units between March and June, led to it rising from second to the number one spot.

The last three previous years, Aston Martin has been the coolest kid around, probably as the luxury car manufacturer is immediately synomous with James Bond. The shortlist for the survey is compiled by 2,500 voters. The final twenty are voted on by a panel, which includes DJ Edith Bowman (I’m not entirely sure why she’s on it) and Adam & Eve founding partner James Murphy.

Technology was the dominant field, with BlackBerry and the BBC’s iPlayer being new entries into the top 20. The only real exception was kooky high end fashion label Vivienne Westwood. Other category winners include Channel 4 and Vogue, which took the title for top radio and TV station, and magazine respectively, while Google’s YouTube was the number one online brand.

Stephen Cheliotis, chief executive of the Centre for Brand Analysis, which administers the survey, said: “The iPhone is something everyone has been talking about. There has been so such a buzz around it and people who haven’t got one, want one.”

If you work in PR, and you and your colleagues fancy yourselves as the next Max Clifford, then  teams have just four weeks left to snap up a table for the industry’s ‘Oscars’ - the PR Week Awards 2009.

If you deserve some glitz and glamour, then the show-bizz event will be held on the 20 October at Grosvenor House on Park Lane, London – the home of all the UK’s great awards ceremonies – and is the PR industry’s biggest night of the year. This year, the judging panel iss headed by Mr Ian Wright, corporate relations director at Diageo.

Tables will be sold and positions allocated on a first come, first served basis – so get you skates on. As with last year we will be selling tables on both the main floor of the Great Room and the Balcony. But if you wish to book fewer than ten people you and your guests will be placed on a shared table with other companies. The ticket price includes the drinks reception, a three-course menu, an evening of excellent entertainment and, of course the awards themselves.

The PR Week Awards reward absolute excellence and represent a value-for-money, powerful, marketing tool for you and your team. Alongside categories such as Consultancy of the Year and PR Professional of the Year, there will be a new category, Global Public Relations, to ref­lect the growing international direction of the industry.

The Mayor of London’s office wants to rebrand London and is inviting agencies to tender to create the new image.

Mayor Boris Johnson and his team have allocated a budget of £600,000 to create a new logo and identity for the city ahead of the 2012 Olympics, and want to have this in place by next spring.

The Mayor’s office is inviting agencies to tender for four contracts related to the new identity: designing the logo; brand activation, which could include advertising and experiential activity; tracking; and evaluation and events.

Dan Ritterband, the director of marketing at the Mayor of London’s office, described the activity as “strategic” and said that it was separate to the current £30 million activation business for bodies such as VisitLondon and ThinkLondon, though the new logo is likely to appear in this activity.

The Mayor’s office is also looking to sell London sponsorship packages to advertisers in key areas such as “culture”, “transport” and “sports”.

The creation of a new identity is seen as a way to build London’s image both in the UK and overseas ahead of the 2012 Olympics.

Ritterband said: “We always realised that there would be a right time for a rebrand before the Olympics to get the messaging right, now we’re three years out from the games there is an opportunity to look at the London brand.”

A recent study carried out by Soc­ial Media Affairs (SMA), found 19 per cent of bloggers identified as Conservative Party supporters, compared with 16 per cent each for the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats.

With perpetual PR disasters for Gordon Brown and his cabinet, I’m surprised that the deficient isn’t double this. However Labour bloggers have refuted this claim, with one of their parliamentary candidates Lucy Powell hitting back: ‘I thought we’d moved on from social media in politics being about how much traffic one blog gets versus another and towards how we actually adapt to a completely new social environment.’

As far as the actual councillors, it is the Liberal Democrats who are the happiest to type away. Amongst all Liberal Democrat bloggers, 55% are councillors, compared with 19% of Conservative bloggers being councillors and 18% of Labour bloggers…