Ambush Marketing

Ambush Marketing, a term first coined by marketing guru Jerry Welsh.

The word Ambush means, the act of concealing yourself and wait to attach by surprise. But the word Ambush Marketing means something very different. It means a tactic whereby a company attempts to ambush or undermine the sponsorship activities of a rival that owns the legal rights to sponsor an event. In simple words it is where a company runs a marketing campaign around an event in which it is not directly involved or has paid a sponsorship fee. Ambush marketing is always associated with events. Ambush marketing is a planned effort by an organization to associate them indirectly with an event and gain some recognition and other benefits .

It is typically targeted at major sporting events like – like the Olympic Games or the world cups in various games and is a strategy adopted by rivals of the official sponsors. For example, in the Winter Olympics held in Lillehammer, Norway in 1994, Visa was one of the official sponsors. Its rival American Express launched an advertising campaign with the slogan: “If you are traveling to Lillehammer, you will need a support, but you don’t need a visa”. An example more familiar to Indians is Pepsi’s hugely successful campaign on the slogan “nothing official about it” during 1996 cricket World Cup, for which rival coke was one of the sponsors. Similarly, when Pepsi sponsored the 1999 Cricket World Cup, Coca Cola put hired people in the stadium and made them furl Coke flags, drink Coke, wear Coke T-shirts etc., in full view of the worldwide TV audiences. In 2004, the tables were again turned. Coca Cola sponsored Euro 2004, but Pepsi used its association with David Beckham and other players to produce a celebrity ad that successfully deflected and diverted viewers’ attention from Euro 2004.

There two forms of ambush marketing:
1) Association Ambushing: The non-sponsor gives the impression of being an official sponsor by using symbols and words associated with the event.

2)Intrusion Ambushing: The non-sponsor company creates hype in the media and goes for spectator exposure of the event by advertising near the venue of the event.

Some Strategies of Ambush Marketing:
1) Sponsoring the media coverage of an event: Kodak sponsored the broadcast of the 1984 Olympics where Fuji was the official sponsor.
2) Sponsoring a sub category within an event : During the 1996 Olympics Samsung which was not the official sponsor took an aggressive strategy against Panasonic which was the official sponsored the event by taking rights to a parking lot near the venue of the event. Panasonic managed just 3% awareness after the event while Samsung managed as high as 9%.
3) Making a sponsorship related contribution: Ian Thorpe, an Australian swimmer is the brand ambassador of Adidas while the team is sponsored by Nike. To protect his personal contact with Adidas he draped his towel over the Nike logo while receiving a medal at the Olympics.
Engaging in advertising with coincides with a sponsored even t- Pepsi floating a hot air-balloon over the final in Sharjah where Coca-Cola was the official sponsor.

More recently, there was a straight fight between Hero Honda, a global sponsor of the Champions Trophy taking place in Sri Lanka, and its rival TVS. TVS has, according to industry experts, paid Rs 12 crore to rope in cricketer Sachin Tendulkar as its brand ambassador for three years.Nike became the official uniform suppliers of many hockey teams during the Olympics without paying the huge sponsorship sum of $5 to 50 million.

Ambush Marketing has many ethical issues related to it. Nowadays there some legislative laws being put into place to curb the issues regarding ambush marketing. One such recent example is current ICC controversy. It is precipitated by the desire to protect official sponsors of the Champions Trophy. The ICC does not want to allow any company to cash in on its events secured by other sponsors paying huge sums of money. The objective was to protect the exclusive rights granted to the sponsors at a whopping cost of $550 million (until 2007).

Some measures which can be taken to curb Ambush Marketing:-
· Preventing tickets from being used as competition prizes
· Policing the event more strictly for “ambushers” and denying them access
· Using event regulations and participation agreements to restrict the rights that participants can grant their own sponsors (e.g., what athletes may wear or carry when they compete).

As such ambush marketing at the margins will arguably always occur and law alone will prove for the ingenious marketing strategies .The challenge now lies with lawyers to determine what strategies can be identified to curtail ambush marketing

Contributed by : Fahad Bagadia & Mohit Kapila