A few days after it was announced that Daimler would supply 460 luxury buses for the World Cup in South Africa, Marjorie Jobson is sitting with four other people in a gray room in Johannesburg. She tells the group that they might to want to rethink the poster issue.
Jobson is joined by a lawyer who has come all the way from Cape Town for the meeting, an old man from Soweto, a blogger who appears to be some sort of an expert in advertising, and a young woman from Barcelona, cradling her young child in her lap. They are searching for a strategy to address the question of how Daimler AG, a company with 256,000 employees worldwide and sales of about €80 billion ($96 billion) in 2009, should be received in South Africa.
Daimler is the principal sponsor of the German national team at the World Cup. Its campaign is called "The Fourth Star for Germany," and it comes complete with lapel pins for fans. The fourth star is an allusion to a possible fourth German World Cup title.
Jobson is a petite woman with practical shoes and a practical hairstyle. A plastic bag filled with USB flash drives is on the table in front of her. "We don't have much time left," she says.
The World Cup opening match is getting closer. They don't have a video screen yet, the issue of the fan zone needs to be resolved, and the group is still looking for celebrities willing to appear for free. The sun is setting over Johannesburg as Jobson stares at the screen of her laptop.
