Not all branding is popular with the people; a word of warning if your planning a large scale marketing campaign. Although to be fair, your brand probably won’t have oppressed million of people, which is why with authorities in Georgia have taken down a statue of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin that stood in the central square of Gori, his hometown.

The six metre (20ft) bronze statue was removed unannounced from its plinth in the middle of the night. The statue will be moved to a museum in Gori dedicated to Stalin, said the head of the city council, Zviad Khmaladze. It will be replaced by a monument for the victims of Georgia’s 2008 war with Russia.

Though he was not a decisive figure in the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, he quickly rose through the ranks of the Communist Party after the revolution, securing his position as undisputed leader in the years after Lenin’s death in 1924. His forced collectivisation of agriculture cost millions of lives, while thousands were executed and millions sent into exile during purges in the 1930s.

Recently, the fate of the statue has been a subject of debate in Georgia, with supporters of the pro-Western “Rose Revolution” that brought President Mikhail Saakashvili to power in 2004 arguing for its removal.

If you’re a tennis fan, you’ll know doubt have enjoyed the spectacle of Roger Federer avoiding one of the biggest upsets in tennis history as he came from two sets down to beat Alejandro Falla at Wimbledon.

The defending champion came through 5-7 4-6 6-4 7-6 (7-1) 6-0 in an eye-brow raising opening match on Centre Court. Falla, the world number 60, served for the match at 5-4 in the fourth set, but top seed Federer found the strength from somewhere. “I definitely got very lucky out there,” a relieved Federer told BBC Sport after winning in three hours and 18 minutes to book a second-round meeting with Serbia’s Ilija Bozoljac.

Having broken Pete Sampras’s Grand Slam record at the All England Club last year, Federer is now looking to equal the American’s haul of seven Wimbledon titles, but for much of the game the Swiss champion looked as though he’d be watching the rest of the tournament on Murray Mount. “For some reason, I wasn’t able to read his serve. That really rattled me. I had to look for that for a long time. Thank God I found it eventually,” said Federer.

If you’re looking forward to watching Andy Murray today, chances are you’d love some tennis based promotional products. Did you know Gift Selection can supply promotional tennis balls? I don’t even play tennis, but I still want some tennis balls with my name on!

Branded tennis balls are just one example of unusual sport based promotional products that Gift Selection can offer; contact their friendly team if you’re looking for something specific.

Gift Selection is making sure logos and advertising messages are the centre of attention with their practical mobile phone covers. Now available is a new range of covers made from a soft sleeve of high-quality neoprene, which offers ideal protection against moisture, impact, shock and scratches. If you’re anything like me, these are ideal as I drop my phone on the floor more times then I answer it.

Neoprene is part of the family of synthetic rubbers, and is actually the DuPont trade name for its brand of polychloroprene, and was invented back in 1930. It is such a useful material, because of its chemical stability, so it can maintain its flexibility over a wide temperature range. It is used in a wide variety of applications, such as laptop sleeves, orthopedic braces, electrical insulation, shock packaging and fan belts.

Your corporate message will be seen far and wide hopefully giving a great contact rate, when your phone is used in public places. These chic covers, are available in many different colours with diverse “interior fittings”, which are both reversible and washable. The pouches are available in three sizes, which are compatible with 70% of all mobile phone models currently on the market.

For a great range of branded phone accessories, check out the friendly team over at Gadgets2order. There not available yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long before branded iPad covers are available too.

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?

See the game on Saturday? Painful wasn’t it. If we can’t beat a team that doesn’t even call football by its real name, then we have some serious issues.

The England camp is more optimistic than me. Robert Green is confident he has the mental resolve to bounce back from the World Cup howler that helped the United States draw 1-1 with England.

“I’m sure there’s 50-odd million people disappointed with me, but I’ll come back, work hard and it won’t affect me,” said West Ham goalkeeper Green.

“At half time I walked in, apologised to the lads and moved on.”

Gerrard added: “Conceding the goal shocked us a bit because when you go in front a team like us expects to go on and win… we can’t criticise the keeper - the ball is tricky and we’ll get behind Rob. I’m sure he’ll come back from this, learn from this, and go from strength to strength. He’ll play his part further down the line. Terry added: “It’s one of those things. Mistakes happen and we’re in this together. We need to get behind Rob - he’s got good friends here.”

Capello’s strategy of naming his team just before the game was backed by the Football Association’s Trevor Brooking.

“His idea has always been that sometimes when you have a big squad and you know the team, those not involved switch off and you become a playing group and a non-playing group,” the Football Association’s director of football development told BBC Radio 5 live’s Sportsweek programme.

Remember it’s not to late to get your hands on some World Cup based promotional products. You know you don’t have to travel all the way to South Africa, to have your own brand vuvuzela!

This type of plastic horn or trumpet has been used in Mexican stadiums since the 1970s. Originally made out of tin, the vuvuzela became popular in South Africa in the 1990s. Well-known Kaizer Chiefs FC fan Freddie “Saddam” Maake claims to have invented the vuvuzela by adapting an aluminium version as early as 1965 from a bicycle horn after removing the black rubber to blow with his mouth. He later found it to be too short and joined a pipe to make it longer.

Contact the friendly team over at Gift Selection for your branded Vuvuzelas!

If you work in a challenging environment,  and you’re looking for unbreakable promotional plastic mugs and tableware, then  you’ll know they can be hard to find. The Mugstore and Gift Selection however, now offer such products with short lead times and great quality printing.

Finding such products is hard enough, but not only that, you can now have them branded too. If you’re looking for unbreakable mugs, plates, bowls, trays and cutlery, then they are now available in a wide variety of attractive and vibrant colours.

When they say “unbreakable”, they don’t just mean under normal use, like a lot of other distributers will mean. If you just drop say a cup on the floor, then unlike a ceramic mug it won’t break, sure. But more than that, if you smash it against it a wall they won’t break too.

However, they do not mean that the products are literally impossible to break. If you’re a  twenty stone man, and you keep jumping up and down on the products, then they may break yes. If you’re unsure about the strength of these products, by all means ask their friendly team for a sample, so you can be certain that they’d meet your requirements.

The Institute of Sales Promotion has now officially been re-launched at the Institute of Promotional Marketing, with the organisation’s new corporate identity being unveiled at the last ever ISP Awards at the end of May and was designed by integration agency Forth Generation.

Clive Mishon, the Institute’s chairman, says that the new name “far better reflects the breadth of promotional marketing activity now being created - it is more than just about sales, though that is important too”.

Mishon stresses that the decision to change the name was not entered into lightly; “We spent months talking to our members and the industry at large. They told us that promotions now span all industries and all media channels, and that the term ‘promotional marketing’ better represents the broader role that promotional content plays in the strategic development and deployment of the behaviour-changing communications across the marketing communications industry”.

Martin Croft, editor of the magazine said; “our industry is no longer about traditional sales promotion on its own. Today, it is just one of a range of techniques which marketers can deploy to achieve their objectives.”

                          I can’t believe they have nothing better to do, but FIFA is investigating whether their sponsorship rights have been breached by a brand of English ale.

Striker, made by Oxfordshire brewer Hook Norton, has been launched to coincide with the forthcoming football tournament. Promotional material claims it is ‘Brewed to celebrate the FIFA World Cup 2010. Supporting England’.

A spokesman for FIFA said that citing the World Cup would ‘clearly go against our regulations’. I think it’s pretty obvious that the beer has no links with FIFA, but there still not happy. I don’t know why Hook Norton even bothered mentioning the FIFA name, as it seems unnecessary to me.

To add to the poor breweries problems, Carlsberg aren’t happy either as they are the official beer of the England team and The Football Association, however they will not be taking action.

If you do have any questions about branding, contact the branding experts at Gift Selection.

The world and his wife are aligning themselves with the World Cup, with some clever branding from a wide variety of businesses. The latest company to jump on the brandwagon is Nestle’s Kit Kat, who are to sponsor all the Sky World Cup coverage as part of the UK’s largest dedicated mobile campaign to date.

I don’t think Kit Kats play a major role in the player’s diets, but this hasn’t stopped the  six-figure deal, brokered by Mindshare, will see Kit Kat sponsor Sky’s World Cup coverage across iPhone, iPod Touch, Smart-phones and all other WAP-enabled mobile devices.

Last week, it was revealed that Mars and The Football Association (FA) are considering legal action against Nestlé, which they believe has breached sponsorship rules in its latest ad for its Kit Kat brand. Unlike Nestle, Mars, landed a five-year partnership with The FA in October and is an official supplier to the England team.

A Nestlé spokesperson said: “During the World Cup, websites tend to become very noisy with a wide range of advertisers vying for consumer attention. This led us to divert our attention to mobile as an interesting new platform to engage audiences. And as the pre-eminent provider of sports and news content on mobile devices, Sky was a natural destination for us.”

If you’re looking to promote your business, with some patriotic promotional products to be used specifically during the World Cup, contact the experts over at Gift Selection. Gift Selection is a quality promotional product distributor who have a full range of corporate gifts, made specifically available for the World Cup 2010.

The sun has definitely put his hat on, meaning now is the time to roll out your summer promotions. If your organisation has links with travel and tourism, then there are many great low cost promotional items, that will do a great job of getting your brand noticed far and wide.

How do you feel about beach balls? Perhaps not an obvious choice, but for a low cost item that can easily be stored away for a trip abroad – it could be worth enquiring. The beauty of branding fun leisure items like this, is that your brand will be associated with happy times and fond memories.

One promotional product distributor who specialises in European type items is Promostore. They have a great selection of summery promotional items, that might not be what you were originally looking for, but once you see them – you know you’ll love them.

Whether it’s branded beach towels, branded beach games, you name it Promostore can supply it. What’s more the vast majority of the branded goods are available in a variety of vibrant and attractive colour options.

The only thing they can’t brand is ice lollies – but they’re working on that.