Guerrilla marketing du jour - naughty Vodafone

Hats off to Vodafone. More than hats off, in fact. We can write about bottom lines, CEO pay and 3G quandaries but a story that will claim as many column, ahem, inches this week relates to a couple of Aussie strippers - and it's not often we get to write about Aussie strippers in these hallowed pages.

They streaked onto the pitch at a weekend Australian Wallabies - New Zealand All Blacks Tri-nations rugby game wearing nothing but prominently placed Vodafone logos.

That was something of a coup only more so because the Olympic Stadium where the game was taking place is sponsored by Vodafone rival Telstra.

The cost for the mobile phone giant is a meagre £3,500 - covering the offenders' fines. The publicity coup is priceless, even if there have been dissenting voices from the sport talking about an error of judgement.

Call it guerrilla marketing. Call it a prank. This type of thing will become more popular.

At Wimbledon tennis every year spot the official, blue chip sponsors - the likes of Rolex on scoreboards. Then spot those happy fans, willing to hold up free boards urging on their nearly-man English hero. Do they care these pieces of card also say Slazenger or the name of some company that isn't an official sponsor?

Newspapers and others are wise to this type of thing and it's hard to stop.

Vodafone will have to take some flak but there is a marketer somewhere quite pleased with himself.

And the final coup? Post-streakers, the arguably unsettled All Blacks missed a kick and went on to lose the game 16-14. And the sponsors of the winning Wallabies? Vodafone.