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Sponsorship issues facing the 2008 Beijing Olympics

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Dr Francis Farrelly is an associate professor at the Department of Marketing at Monash University. Dr Pascale Quester is the inaugural professor of marketing at the School of Commerce of the University of Adelaide.

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What Aussie marketers think of ambush

Ambush marketing is generally not illegal, but is it wrong? This question was contemplated by around 50 senior marketers at an Australian Marketing Institute breakfast held in Sydney in June. Themed 'Fair Game or Bad Sportsmanship', the event prompted marketers to consider whether guerrilla tactics can be justified, are worth the risk and deliver a return.

Glen Condie, a director of non-traditional marketing agency, Maverick, delivered a presentation that included case studies of big budget campaigns by Vodafone and Ford, alongside other low budget examples, such as one by a Peruvian pizza parlour. In addressing the audience on ambushing, Condie touched on the conflict that naturally arises between marketing departments and their risk-averse corporate communications counterparts.

Event chair Jacqueline Burns said that conflict was evident by the difficulty she faced in securing a speaker for the AMI event. “We approached a bunch of big name brands to co-present with Glen, but their responses generally fell into three categories: they had been ambushed, but didn't want to talk about it; they had ambushed a competitor, but didn't want to admit that; or, they were willing to speak about their experience, but their corporate affairs people wouldn't let them,” Burns explained.

Attendees at the event were surveyed on their attitudes to ambush. Over 45 percent of respondents admitted to having ambushed a competitor, while just 12 percent said they had been the target of an ambush campaign. One-third of respondents even said they have allocated funds to ambush marketing in the next financial year's budget. “This indicates marketers are ambushing strategically, not merely reacting opportunistically,” noted Burns.

The return on the investment in ambushing marketing was not clear from the survey, with the overwhelming majority of respondents who had engaged in ambush tactics not sure how significantly the campaign had impacted sales. Five percent reported an uplift in sales of greater than 10 percent.

To the legitimate sponsor, ‘ambush’ is a dirty word. But there are ways to fend off an ambush attack and even turn it into a positive for your brand, say Dr Francis Farrelly and Dr Pascale Quester.

As the 2008 Beijing Olympics approach, and as athletes work to attain their scientifically scheduled peak physical form, corporate sponsors are gearing up for a different battle. Having invested in the Games and tied their brand strategy to the Olympic theme, they must now guard jealously this positioning in the face of ‘ambushers’ – direct competitors striving to catch an illicit ride on the Olympic wave by deceiving or confusing consumers into believing they too are official sponsors.

The term ambush marketing was first coined by Alan Bayless in 1988 to describe the false association by a company not sponsoring an event with a view to derive similar benefits as official sponsors do. Early examples of this questionable strategy include Wendy’s appropriation of the Lillehammer Winter Games at the expense of McDonald’s, American Express’s efforts to outshine official Olympic sponsor Visa, Quality Inn’s ambushing of Hilton, as well as Nike’s attempt to appropriate the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games from official sponsor Reebok.

This type of activity is not confined to the Olympics, however. Incidents of ambush have occurred at many major events ranging from World Cup and European soccer championships, to a broad range of sports such as tennis, rugby, cricket and cycling. On a global scale, ambush marketing has been most prevalent in the beverage (e.g. Coca-Cola and Pepsi), credit card (e.g. American Express, MasterCard and Visa) fast food (e.g. Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s) and sports apparel (e.g. Adidas, Nike and Reebok) industries. In all cases, ambushers have aimed to enhance their own brand equity, at the expense of official sponsors, by illegitimately associating their name with the positive brand equity of the target sport or event.

Despite the best efforts of the International Olympic Committee and other major sports properties across the globe, ambush marketing has plagued the area of sponsorship for close to 15 years.

This article is based on findings from a recent study spanning four continents. The field research reported here sought a better understanding of ambush marketing from the perspective of both legitimate parties (sponsor and property) in the sponsorship partnership. (The term ‘property’ is used here to describe any organisation [e.g. the NFL or Manchester United], event [e.g. Super Bowl or Soccer World Cup] or athlete [e.g. Tiger Woods or David Beckham] in which a sponsor invests as part of its marketing and communications strategy.) In particular, we sought to clarify how ambush marketing was perceived and, most importantly, how to identify its strategic implications.

What exactly constitutes ambush marketing?

Our respondents defined ambush as a quasi-parasitic appropriation of the brand value of an event by competitors who time a purposeful use of the sport theme during and around the event they seek to ambush. Interestingly, our panel of experts did not consider the regular use of sport imagery by non-sponsors as blatant or unethical. On the other hand, if competitors time their communication strategy in such a way that the sport theme is used particularly during or around the event, then the intent is clearly to ‘steal the show’ and hence, this tactic constitutes ambush.

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