With less than a month to go has the Soccer World Cup grabbed your attention? If you’re living in Australia than the answer is probably a no!

We’re coming into our winter months where the local Footy (Aussie rules) and Rugby competitions dominate our media airways and attention.

I’ve been really surprised with the build-up to this Soccer World Cup. Granted we’ve got a month to go and fewer superstars in our national team, but I would’ve expected more buzz. To date, I’ve only seen one TV commercial by the official partner Hyundai promoting the World Cup and no Social Media campaigns or competitions.

Similar to Super Bowl ads in America, Soccer World Cup TV commercials by the main sporting brands are eagerly anticipated. Nike and Adidas have released YouTube ads showcasing the soccer stars of the upcoming event. We haven’t seen them here, but shortened versions of the ads may have been shown on TV in overseas markets.

Being a football (soccer) fan, I’ve been following the Socceroos every move, our 30 man squad was named last week. Australia is in one of the groups of ‘death’, with games against Spain, Netherlands and Chile. We’ll be happy with a draw!

FIFA strictly controls the marketing of the event. Unless you’ve paid millions of dollars to FIFA to be an official sponsor you cannot reference ‘Soccer World Cup’ in your advertising activity. There’s actually over 10 variations of the words ‘World Cup’ you cannot use in your advertising, including logos, click here for the brand guidelines and go to page 8 for the restrictions. The advertising restrictions are similar to the Olympics.

Looking at FIFA’s World Cup website and Google’s Play store it is hard to work out if there’s an official App for the tournament. There’s the standard FIFA App, but you think they would make one for the tournament. If there is one, they’re not making it easy to find. There’s no shortage of unofficial World Cup Apps.

The Technical Lead at work has been playing with Adidas’ FIFA World Cup App, which adds wallpapers of the soccer fields and gives score updates. I get the feeling the developers had a field day with the features in this App. There doesn’t seem to be any other World Cup Apps by the other major sponsors.

Expect marketing activity from Qantas, Coke, McDonalds and other brands to kick-off shortly. With the other footy codes controlling the purse strings it’s hard to see the Soccer World Cup dominating the back pages of the papers until the event starts. History shows us the country unites behind the Socceroos (Aussies) and the ‘world game’ once the tournament begins. Bring on the Soccer World Cup!