Diageo PLC, the London-based marketer of such booze brands as Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Smirnoff and Tanqueray, quietly bought 30-second spots from local stations in major local markets that will run during the January 28 game.

Guinness UDV, Diageo's US arm, last year began making plans to launch its new drink Smirnoff Ice in the US, and approached CBS, seeking to purchase a slot for a commercial during the network's telecast of the game.

In the eyes of marketers, the Super Bowl's predicted audience of 130 million viewers this year makes it the premiere vehicle for launching a new drink. More importantly, the target consumers of Smirnoff Ice are 20-something guys - a hearty contingent of the football audience. But CBS, a unit of Viacom Inc., promptly rejected Diageo's bid to air an ad for Smirnoff Ice during the Super Bowl. The big television networks, declining to serve as a lightning rod for anti-alcohol critics, practices a self-imposed ban on ads for hard liquor. Though Smirnoff Ice carries the Smirnoff name and logo, it isn't a vodka - it's a malt drink that's classified as beer. A CBS spokesman declined to comment on why the ad was refused. But there was another roadblock in Diageo's way as well: CBS had assured Anheuser-Busch Cos. that only its brands - Budweiser and Michelob - would get commercial plugs during the game.

Diageo declined to say how much it is spending on its Super Bowl gambit, or provide the exact number of markets in which the ads will appear. But a brand manager for Smirnoff Ice confirmed Diageo's strategy and said the company is "buying many spot markets" to reach as "comprehensive an audience as it can." Diageo is exploiting the fact that a network's ad-selling policies, including any promise of exclusivity, don't extend to commercials purchased from the local stations. But Diageo's end-run also reflects how the alcohol industry is growing more eager to promote hard-liquor brands on television at a time when Americans are drinking less distilled spirits in general. For years, although beer and wine makers advertised on the airwaves, the liquor industry practiced its own voluntary ban on TV and radio ads. Now, though many alcohol marketers would like more exposure, it's the networks that stand in the way. Mr Gary Galanis, a spokesman for Diageo's US arm, asserts that booze brands and beer brands shouldn'tbe treated as different animals: "We think all alcohol should be treated the same."

Smirnoff Ice tastes like a vodka cocktail with a hint of citrus but is made of malt and will be packaged like beer, in large plastic bottles priced at $6.99 a six-pack. The Smirnoff Ice commercial, created by the WPP Group's J Walter Thompson, features two young fellows in the wildness who stumble upon a big grizzly bear. One grabs some honey, but rather than throwing the honey into the woods for the bear to follow, the dude aims the container directly at his pal, covering him with the stuff. The bear then chases the honey-covered camper into the woods, leaving the other guy alone at the campsite - with a big stash of chilled Smirnoff Ice and two attractive young women. "Didn't you have a friend?" one asks innocently.

Smirnoff Ice will have to make a big splash on January 28 to compete with Budweiser's advertising force. Anheuser-Busch paid an estimated $18 million for four minutes of air time to promote Budweiser and other brands on this year's game. Mr August A. Busch IV, the company's group vice-president for marketing and wholesale operations, said the St. Louis brewer aims to "own" the Super Bowl game. He wouldn't comment on Diageo's plan to promote Smirnoff Ice as a rival product.

It's not the first time a deal for exclusivity on the Super Bowl has gone awry. It's not even the first time it has happened to Anheuser-Busch. In 1999, Dutch beer maker Heineken NV quietly pulled off a maneuver similar to Diageo's when it bought time from stations in 21 local markets in order to create a quasinational campaign during Super Bowl XXXIII. As part of a renewed push for more US beer drinkers, Heineken bought time on Fox affiliates in major markets including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. The markets targeted account for between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of Heineken's US sales. Viewers who saw the Heineken ads never knew they were only local spots.

Mr Bill Katz, president and co-chief executive of BBDO New York, the Omnicom Group unit that created national Super Bowl commercials for Pepsi and Doritos, says "guerrilla marketing" techniques are increasingly common in big-time sports events because viewers easily get confused. When asked to recall the names of official commercial sponsors, many err and cite the names of rival companies that touted their brands in well-placed billboards or in ads that aired in local markets. The upshot, he adds, is that "consumers don't know the difference."