• by Tanya Gazdik , Yesterday

Levi’s has devised possibly the best strategy for dealing with the requirement that stadiums hosting FIFA World Cup games cover up their logos. 

With its stadium in San Francisco now officially renamed San Francisco Bay Area Stadium during the tournament, the brand changed its Instagram profile photo to a picture of the covered-up logo.

“Arguably, the batwing’s distinctive shape became even more noticeable once covered with a white tarp, attracting more attention than it might have if the logo had been left uncovered,” according to Sourcing Journal.. “Levi’s is embracing the irony.”

The brand also posted videos from the stadium showing the shrouded emblem at the entrance and above the scoreboard.

Set to the viral “Nobody’s Gonna Know” audio, the post has the caption: “Welcoming the world to the beautiful [redacted] stadium!”

The brand took it a step further on Sunday, covering up the logo at some of its stores around the world including in Berlin, Hong Kong, Mexico, Milan, Paris and UAE and creating another Instagram post showing those signs and consumer reactions. The post says “Come visit, if you can find us!”

Fast Company is calling the brand’s strategy of more or less punking FIFA “one of the biggest brand moments of the World Cup.” 

World Cup organizers are not messing around when it comes to brands drawing attention away from the games. 

“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,” according to HighSnobiety.  “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.”

Gillette took a page from Levi’s in covering up the logo at the stadium bearing its name in Boston.

On Instagram, the brand posted a photo of the covered stadium and wrote: “At least we got to choose how to cover it.”

The logo appears to be covered in -- what else? -- shaving cream.