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More than 1bn people worldwide watched Italy beat France in the World Cup final last Sunday, and millions more will have seen advertisers' attempts to cash in on the tournament over the past month. But, much like the Cup itself, there are inevitably winners and losers. So, who woke up on Monday as happy as World Cup-winning coach Marcello Lippi, and who has spent the past week as sick - and sorry - as Sven?

Sports goods

The World Cup would not be complete without a Nike vs Adidas head-to-head ad blitz. Nike has dominated past tournaments, buoyed principally by its sponsorship of the Brazil national team. But this year, Adidas has come out on top in terms of sales, with Nike's performance looking as laboured as an out-of-form Ronaldinho trying to pass to an overweight Ronaldo trundling around the pitch.

While Nike's 'La Joga Bonita' campaign compared favourably with Adidas' '+10 Teamgeist' ads in terms of creativity, events on the pitch worked against it.

'Nike's work was engrained in the idea of beautiful football, but if you look at some of the performances of its sponsored teams and players, namely Portugal and Wayne Rooney, it was the antithesis,' says Karen Earl Sponsorship consulting director Tim Crow. 'Brazil's comparatively early exit also didn't have the effect Nike had hoped for.'

According to the latest figures, Adidas outperformed its bottom-line targets, selling a record number of 3m replica shirts - of which half were for the German national team - double its sales at the 2002 tournament. Nike, meanwhile, sold 2.4m - a minor increase on its efforts four years ago.

Adidas now holds a higher market share in Europe than its arch-rival, with 37% of all sporting-goods sales. 'There is no doubt that Adidas has really gone all-out this year,' says Jonathan Gregory, marketing director at Wembley Stadium and a former Puma marketer.

'As a German company, you get the feeling it really wanted to push its home advantage to challenge Nike's perceived dominance,' he adds. 'It's always turf warfare, but the initial signs are that it has come out on top.'

Adidas' success is all the more remarkable given that the brand sponsored only six teams at the Cup compared with Nike's eight - although Adidas' additional outlay as an official tournament sponsor should not be discounted.

Alcohol

While almost every beer brand found some way, however spurious, to associate itself with football over the past month, two companies managed to pursue strategies to differentiate themselves.

One was Carlsberg, which, through its sponsorship of the England team and a much-lauded ad campaign featuring former star players turning out for a pub team, has succeeded in boosting bottom-line sales.

The brand claims to have broken all records in the take-home market for a sporting occasion by selling 30m pints in the past four weeks. Additionally, four times more Carlsberg has been sold in England than normal.

Carlsberg has needed to be on its toes. Over the past 12 months, Budweiser has finally found a successful strategy to tie it to football, the combination of its World Cup sponsorship deal with FIFA and advertising idents around ITV's coverage ramming home its message.

'You can't have failed to notice Budweiser,' says Rob Quick, managing director of Double Quick Marketing. 'Whether you like the executions or not, it has enjoyed lots of good exposure.'

Telecoms

The telecoms sector is the latest to have entered the World Cup brand war. With O2 concentrating on its music strategy and Vodafone surprisingly inconspicuous given its long-term association with Manchester United and latterly the Champions League, it was left to 3 and T-Mobile to fight it out.

A spokeswoman for 3 claims that the network achieved more than 1m viewings of its World Cup content in June as a direct consequence of its offer of downloadable goals and highlights - a figure it predicted would double this month.

As a World Cup sponsor through parent company Deutsche Telekom's deal with FIFA, T-Mobile was a prominent brand on the ground in Germany via its presence at the Fan Parks, although its association was not overtly leveraged in the UK.

T-Mobile held the UK mobile rights to the event - a deal that incorporated short clips for each match - but insiders suggest the non-exclusivity of the contract meant the brand's offering did not differentiate it from 3's, and consequently its consumer acquisition drive did not receive the additional fillip it had sought.

Best and worst of the rest

Undoubtedly the gutsiest World Cup marketing move was made by Mars, which rebranded itself as Believe for the duration of the tournament. Although no figures on its sales performance are available at this point, the creative strategy has divided opinion among observers as to its success. Karen Earl's Tim Crow is a fan. 'It's impressive. Mars now owns the word "Believe", and the strategy has given it a sustainable platform for all sorts of future initiatives,' he says.

On the negative side, the industry knives came out for Pepsi's campaign, which offered consumers the opportunity to win an Xbox. In the face of arch-rival Coca-Cola's highly successful competition to win tickets by sending in mobile-phone photos, Pepsi vanished into obscurity, according to one observer.

A commonly quoted example of poor World Cup marketing came in the form of Pringles' keepy-uppy campaign fronted by Roberto Carlos and Steven Gerrard. As Tim Collins, head of sponsorship at Arena International, comments: 'The idea is fundamentally flawed. Have you tried to keep a Pringles tube in the air?'