The World Cup is fast approaching and the official sponsors are doing their bit in generating hype by dreaming up weird and wonderful PR campaigns.

My personal favourite so far came from the PR agency of motor oil and lubricants brand Castrol, who recently launched the Castrol Index. It consists of geeky systems such as the Castrol Rankings, which ranks players across the world based on their performances, and the World Cup Predictor, which gives each team a percentage of their chance of winning the tournament.

Most eye-catching however is the Ultimate Performing Player page, which gives users on their website the chance to create an image of their perfect player using elements from real players. Castrol’s own player emerged as a freak of nature, with Peter Crouch’s height, Carles Puyol’s hair and Rory Delap’s arms.

Simple stuff, but the media loved it. It featured in The Sun and other national newspapers as well as Sport.co.uk and Soccerlens online.