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7. Make friends with The Sun - or look in The Mirror

Become best mates with The Sun, advises Graham Bednash, managing partner at media communications agency Michelides & Bednash. "You can't beat the tabloids during the World Cup and no one does it better than The Sun," he says. "It has a great feel for what fans want and the fun element of the tournament."

When England played Argentina in 1988, The Sun printed a prayer mat in a double page spread - marked out for both knees, and a space between for a beer bottle. The red tops will set out to own the World Cup again, and the revitalised Daily Mirror should give The Sun a run for its money.

Scoring chance: Jumpers for goal posts - must be a winner.

Red card risk: Always a risk with the tabloid terrors.

8. Be innovative - have a Boddies

So you're Boddington's: no match in spending power to an official sponsor like Anheuser Busch. So what do you do? Go tactical, and replace loadsa money with plenty of good ideas.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty developed a series of newspaper ads for Boddington's during the last World Cup that provided fans with party props - joke items they could cut out, including paper flowers to give their girlfriends and a sign to reserve a seat in front of the TV. "Being the official beer makes you look a bit corporate and institutional,

says Steve Kershaw, BBH's head of global marketing. "We saw the World Cup as all about lads having a laugh, and the best way to advertise Boddington's would be to take advantage of its Mancunian wit."

Tactical ads rest on the quality and timing of their creative, as illustrated by Virgin Cola's 'Prozac anyone?' ad after England lost to Argentina in 1998.

Scoring chance: Good opportunity to poach a goal.

Red card risk: Very small, if you're too quick for the referee to spot you.

9. Smuggle your brand in - is that a Pepsi bottle under your jumper?

This used to be a fairly easy one. You'd position people away from the ground to give out free drinks or product samples, which would be taken in and hopefully appear on TV.

It could be drinks, snacks or T-shirts bearing your brand's logo. It was guerrilla marketing at its simplest. As recently as last year, Ellesse, JJB Sports and The Independent were all accused of 'ambush' marketing for giving their brands away to tennis fans on their way to Wimbledon.

But it's not so easy any more, fans are now often checked before they enter venues. At the Olympics in Sydney in 2000, fans carrying bottles of Pepsi were refused entry unless they dumped them.

Scoring chance: Next to none.

Red card risk: High, this is one offence FIFA is determined to tackle.

10. World Cup, what World Cup?

If you can't beat them don't join them. Not everyone wants to eat and sleep football during June. Brands that specifically target football agnostics would do well to take advantage of the creative marketing opportunities of alluding to their frustrations.

Asda scored a decent amount of publicity during the last World Cup for providing handsome men as shopping companions for football widows, while Odeon encouraged women to go to the cinema with special promotions.

Scoring chance: High for the right market.

Red card risk: Don't offend female football fans.

11. Do a cunning stunt - with plenty of Front

Two of the best media stunts in recent years involved football. Channel 5 took a pitchside hoarding at a live game on BBC that told viewers to turn over because Liverpool were playing in a European match on Channel 5.

Front magazine went one better and planted someone at the side of the pitch when Manchester United ran out for a European Cup match. He stripped off his kit and strode up to stand beside the players for the team photo.

The next day his picture was plastered over papers around the world. Once the stunt was revealed, it got even more coverage.

Scoring chance: Pull it off and you win.

Red card risk: Sure to get sent off, but that's the point.

FIVE LIKELY LADS

Pepsi Coca-Cola might be the official cola sponsor of the World Cup, but its chief competitor is, as usual, finding ways to get its voice heard. Pepsi is planning to use its sponsorship of key players such as David Beckham, Emmanuel Petit and Rivaldo to create a team to play a side of sumo wrestlers, in a piece of creative which reflects the tournament's venue. The wrestlers and players will feature in a major ad campaign for Pepsi, as well as in a pre-World Cup party at Old Trafford, which competition winners will be invited to. Pepsi's strategy of building its World Cup communications around key players has been dealt a blow by Beckham's injury, but the media frenzy surrounding the player won't go away, and metatarsals crossed, it looks like he'll be fit just in time.

Carlsberg

Like the Coke/Pepsi spat, Carlsberg is taking on official sponsor Budweiser. Its Carlsberg International Pub Cup is set to reach its climax in mid-June with a final in Portugal. The Cup, which started in the UK in 1996 with pub teams competing against each other, now involves teams from 12 countries. "The Pub Cup has mushroomed over the past few years", says Ketchum Sports Network senior account director Simon Oliveira, "it's a logical extension to the brand and gets fans involved.

But beer brands also have to deal with the issue of the early morning kick-offs - although pubs will be open. First orders, please!

Blue Square

Online betting site Blue Square intends to take advantage of its best business opportunity yet by hijacking media sites. Its trademark media strategy has been to dominate the space around an event. For example, at the Boat Race it posted A3 versions of its ads on lamp posts leading to key bridges along the route. As betting is illegal in Japan, it cannot advertise around the venues, so it intends to blast the internet with ads while keeping up its sponsorship slots on radio station talkSPORT and paper Metro.

Reebok

Reebok is creating three live events in June in Glasgow, Manchester and Brighton, themed around its 'Sofa Games' - a fan's tournament using sofas as goalposts. The events will also include live music and entertainment.

Nike (of course)

Nike's attempts to steal this World Cup from official sponsor Adidas include a five-a-side tournament in London. The brand also plans to have bus-side ads featuring LED displays that give the constantly updated score of important matches.

It costs up to £20m to be an official sponsor of the World Cup.

For that, your brand is displayed prominently around grounds during the tournament, you receive between 200 and 250 tickets per match to use for corporate hospitality and promotions, and you win the legal right to use the World Cup name and its logos in all your marketing and advertising.

Or you can keep your £20m and attempt to steal the World Cup. That means coming up with campaigns and marketing stunts that put your brand squarely in the mind of consumers when they think about the event - boosting sales and image without investing in 'official' sponsorship.

The only problem is that it might be illegal. Governing body FIFA defines ambush marketing as "the unauthorised association of a business or an organisation with the FIFA World Cup(tm)".

FIFA has promised to stamp out such guerrilla tactics. But one man's ambush marketing is another's innovative marketing, so we examine 11 ideas for brands that want to 'steal' the World Cup - and assess their chances.

1. Hijack outdoor - just do it

You can't be in the stadiums, but what about the posters around them and on the route that fans and the teams will travel to reach them? Or ads on trains, buses and cabs in the cities where games are being played?

Nike is the master of media glory by tactical association. In Euro '96 in the UK, Nike spent £1m to dominate poster sites around the key venues, compared with £3.5m to be an official sponsor. According to research at the time by BMRB international, this outdoor blitz led one in four people to believe Nike was an official sponsor.

The brand has gone on making noise, plastering the image of many of the sports stars it sponsors over entire buildings at key sports events, but FIFA is clamping down. It has struck a deal with the authorities in Japan and Korea so that official sponsors receive first refusal on key outdoor sites. It also learned from the recent Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where the International Olympic Committee got the owners of many of the biggest buildings in the city to fly official images, or not carry advertising at all.

Scoring chance: Fewer opportunities as FIFA's defence gets tighter.

Red card risk: High. FIFA now has no-go zones for outdoor rivals.

2. Be cheeky - eat pies

Poking fun at an official sponsor can pay off. One of the most successful campaigns in recent years came, not surprisingly, from Tango. Its former agency HHCL and Partners parodied Coca-Cola's line 'Eat Football, Sleep Football, Drink Coca-Cola' with its own 'Eat Pies, Sleep A Lot, Drink Tango' during France '98. Two years later in Euro 2000 (also sponsored by Coke) it rubbed salt in the wounds with a campaign that declared 'Tango: officially a drink during Euro 2000'.

Coke's reaction? It held a strategy meeting among marketers called 'Kill Tango', and has put additional resources behind Fanta to target Tango.

Scoring chance: A cheeky piece of play that deserves a goal.

Red card risk: 'C'mon ref we're only having a laugh' might not wash.

3. Create an event - grab a Sumo

If you're not a sponsor of the main event, create your own around it. Pepsi is creating a worldwide Sumo wrestling contest with fans donning giant Sumo suits to wrestle each other. Nike has created Nike Villages around both previous World Cups and Olympics, sprinkling them with the sports stars it sponsors. The fans flock to the villages to take part in the sports on offer and, suddenly, Nike is core to their experience of the game. Once again, a survey at the time found that 70% of people believed the company was an official sponsor.

But beware, the authorities are cracking down again. The Winter Olympics saw whole areas of streets sealed off to ambush marketers and declared 'Olympic zones'.

Scoring chance: High, if the event is a crowd pleaser.

Red card risk: You can avoid penalties by picking the right location.

4. Buy ITV's Sponsorship - when the 'official sponsors' don't

The official sponsors have all turned down the chance to take the sponsorship of ITV's World Cup coverage for £3.5m. Given that many of the key games are being played in the morning and audiences are expected to be significantly down on 1998, they thought the deal simply not worth it.

But a month before the tournament kicks off, Travelex, the world's largest foreign exchange specialist, stepped in to sign what was reported as a £3m deal. Many people's reaction on hearing the news was who? - but perhaps that's the point. Travelex wants to raise its profile. The deal covers all broadcasts and ITV's World Cup web site.

Scoring chance: Depends on how good Travelex's creative bumper breaks are across the tournament. But it could steal some World Cup glory from main sponsors.

Red card risk: High repetition factor is a danger. Remember Vauxhall's sponsorship in 1988 - voted the most irritating ads during the last World Cup by British viewers.

5. Sponsor David Beckham - Oh no, it's a broken toe!

Why sponsor the event if you could sponsor the biggest English star in the tournament for a much smaller fee and get possibly just as much glory?

David Beckham is the world's most marketable player and the likes of Adidas, Brylcreem, Pepsi, and Police sunglasses have all signed sponsorship deals with him, totalling around £7m a year. In a classic bit of guerrilla marketing of its own, Coca-Cola, official sponsor of the England team, got in on the act - putting a picture of Becks in his England strip on special bottles produced for the World Cup.

But all that, of course, was before Beckham broke a bone in his foot.

It's still touch and go as to whether he will recover in time to play in the tournament, and that has serious implications for those brands that had bet on him.

But Beckham isn't the only star with sponsorship hopes pinned to him.

Portugal's Luis Figo runs him close in the sponsorship stakes with deals with Coca-Cola, Nike and Guess, while England's Michael Owen is number three with deals from Sporties, Umbro, and Tissot watches.

Scoring chance: High, if your player makes it onto the pitch.

Red card risk: The danger is more in being carried off than sent off.

6. Pick the winning team - or try to

This isn't really ambush marketing in its true sense, but picking the right teams and players has been core to Nike's marketing strategy around the World Cup and other football events. Uninterested in being an official sponsor, Nike's mission is to have its brand associated with the winners.

The only problem is it always seems to get it wrong. In Euro '96, despite the success of its poster campaign, hardly any of the players it featured actually got to play (Eric Cantona, perhaps its most high-profile star, failed even to make it into the French squad). The last World Cup saw Nike still backing Brazil, but the team under-performed. Angry fans turned on both team and sponsor, and Nike had to answer questions in a special investigation called by the Brazilian government to question its influence.

This year, the Brazilian link continues, but Adidas - kit supplier to the French squad - looks as if it has got the best team.