Despite its name being Levi’s Stadium, there is to be no Levi’s branding on the arena during World Cup games. That was the direct order from FIFA, football’s international federation, who even temporarily renamed the stadium in accordance with its strict advertising rules. Levi’s, however, turned lemons into lemonade as one of several brands making the most of the competition they’re technically not allowed to be at. 

The World Cup organizer has a “clean stadium” policy that it takes very seriously, even taping over Heinz branding on ketchup bottles at in-stadium restaurants, forcing players to cover the Beats logo on their headphones, and, biggest of all, taking the Levi’s out of the Levi’s Stadium. Or at least trying to. 

You don’t need to see the Levi’s name spelled out to know you’re looking at a Levi’s logo, so when the over-150-year-old denim giant covered its stadium’s logo in a white sheet, everyone still knew what they were looking at.

And Levi’s knows it.

The brand swiftly uploaded a video of the covered-up branding around the stadium to the trending “nobody’s gonna know” audio clip, which sits at 70 million views at the time of writing and has almost two million likes. Levi’s even swapped out its social-media profile photos for good measure, capitalizing on the accidental free advertising.

Then Beats by Dre played a similar trick. The audio company sent footballers a mysterious new pair of unreleased headphones to wear pre-game at the World Cup but FIFA ordered Jamal Musiala to cover the Beats by Dre logo on his headphones with a strip of tape before Germany’s 7-1 win against Curaçao. Undeterred, the Apple-owned brand immediately  swapped its Instagram profile photo with a piece of white tape covering the logo to match the headphones worn Musiala’s latest campaign shoot. 

Clearly, FIFA’s plan hasn’t worked, at least not as intended. 

If you’ve ever spent time scrolling through the content cesspit that is LinkedIn, you’ll know this to be a familiar story. As LinkedIn’s sharpest advertising minds like to remind everyone every Olympics, Nike has run a series of similar guerrilla marketing campaigns where its competitors spend hundreds of millions on being the event's title sponsor but Nike’s nifty ideas mean it garners the most attention, even inadvertently. At the 2012 London Olympics, for instance, the brand couldn’t mention the host city in its advertising as Nike wasn’t an Olympics sponsor, so it filmed promos in other cities called London around the world, from Ohio to Jamaica, and earned plenty of incidental attention anyways. 

Levi’s and Beats today are acting just as Nike did back then. Sure, they might not have splashed out on being an officially licensed FIFA partner, but that’s not the be-all and end-all. They have something other brands don’t: A truly creative idea. 

Highsnobiety has affiliate marketing partnerships, which means we may receive a commission from your purchase. Want to shop the products our editors actually love? Visit our SHOPPER page and subscribe to the newsletter for recs on all things fashion, footwear, and beauty.