Ambush Marketing

Innovative or Immoral?

What’s wrong with these pictures?

Consider also ITB Berlin and Germanwings …

Ambush marketing comes to airlines: Germanwings

takes over ITB Berlin using Facebook Places

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Learning Objectives

At the end of this session you should be able to:• Distinguish between sponsorship, ambush

marketing, incidental ambush and other communication tools

• Understand the benefits of ambush marketing • List various ambush marketing strategies• Develop strategies to prevent ambush

marketing opportunities and enhance event-sponsor partnership

What is Ambush Marketing?

“... a planned effort by an organisation to associate themselves indirectly

with an event in order to gain at least some of the recognition and benefits

that are associated with being a sponsor.”

(Sandler and Shani, 1989: p11)

Meenaghan (1994) The practice whereby another company, often a competitor, intrudes upon public attention surrounding the event, thereby deflecting attention toward themselves and away from the sponsor.

CNOSF (French Olympic Committee, 2006)

A set of behaviours by which an economic agent lurks in the wake of another in order to take advantage, free of charge, of his efforts and skills.

Walliser (2006) A technique where an advertiser who does not hold official sponsorship rights, notably for an event, tries to make the public believe the contrary.

Farrelly, Quester and Greyser (2005)

Striving to catch an illicit ride on an event’s wave by deceiving or confusing consumers into believing a company is an official sponsor.

Definitions of Ambush Marketing

Goals of Ambush Marketing

• To hijack the intrinsic values of an event and take advantage, for the least possible cost

• To improve the ambusher’s brand reputation and transfer the positive aspects of the event to its brand

• To mislead the public into thinking the ambush marketer is something it’s not

• To weaken the link between the official sponsors and the event by creating confusion about sponsors’ identities

The Ambush Marketer’s Toolkit

• Event broadcasters• People related to event (e.g. athletes, coach, team,

retired athletes, dead athletes, and commentators)• Symbols of the activity (e.g. fields, balls, uniforms

and tickets)• Symbols of the place (e.g. arenas, cities, countries

and monuments) • Unprotected symbols of the event (e.g. colours,

generic names, generic sentences, generic goods and congratulatory messages)

Event Broadcasters &Ambush Marketers

• Many different brands (ambushers) will claim to ‘proudly bring’ to audiences in different countries the same event, sponsored by yet another brand, that of the official sponsor!

Sponsors of Athletes & Other Personalities

• They will often try to gain some of the reflected glory of a major event by running an advertising campaign featuring their sponsored personalities when those individuals are participating in that event

Ambushing Symbols

• Associating the ambushing company/its brands/its products with the venue where the event takes place

• Using or “ambushing” symbols or themes, or even musical tunes in its advertising, typically used by an the event

Other Common Ambushing Tactics

• Saturating the physical environment of the event, or any available advertising space around it

• Seeking a sponsorship association with a related property, in order to secure access to an event for which it is not entitled to claim sponsor status

• Creating a competing and simultaneous event to coincide and divert from the sponsored event

Ambushers Vs Official Sponsors

• Although their tactics appear very similar ambush marketers cannot be confused with sponsors because they:– Do not have an official agreement with the event– Have no right to use protected imagery of the

event– Cannot do public relations at event venues

IF AMBUSH MARKETERS ARE FOUND DOING ANY OF THE ABOVE THE WILL BE GUILTY OF COPYRIGHT

INFRIGEMENT

Accidental Ambush Marketers

• It is also possible for the confusion that ambush marketers seek to create to occur unintentionally causing an incidental ambush marketing effect

PUMA 2010 Advertisment

Accidental orIntentional?

What is this Ad showing?

Accidental orIntentional?

Ambushing Right or Wrong?

THOSE IN FAVOUR THOSE OPPOSED

Consider ...

SMALL PRODUCERS SUCH AS BAVARIA BREWERY HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO RESORT TO AMBUSH

MARKETING AS THEY WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO AFFORD OFFICIAL SPONSORSHIP OF A MEGA-EVENT

However ...

The fact is mega-events such as the Olympic Games cannot exist

without multi-national firms and their levels of

investment in them.

How Can Event Marketers Stop Ambushers

• Legal measures – registering copyright and trademarks

• Enacting an event act such as the ‘Olympic Marks Act’ to provide protection for symbols and phrases which though traditionally cannot be copyrighted or trademarked will be protected for a limited time

• Designating event venues as clean zones• On-site monitoring and patrols• Name and shaming ambush marketers

For example ...

The Vancouver Olympics protected ...• ‘Faster, higher, stronger’• Canadian Olympic Committee• International Olympic Committee • Olympic• Olympic Games • 2010 Canada

For example ...

• Forbidding of spectators wearing clothing with large logos

• Covering up or destroying unauthorised signage, message or logos

• Restricting the size of logos on players’ uniforms

However here in Finland …

• Finnish legislation does not contain any specific provisions on the protection of trademarks or other designations relating to Major Sports or other

• Neither Trademark Act nor any other national legislation in Finland provides for specific protection against Ambush Marketing as such.

• The only legislation available is standard legislation for trade marks and intellectual property and those governing ethical business practice

For example …

The Finnish Olympic Committee applied for registration of the word mark OLYMPIALAISET (meaning in English “Olympic Games”) in Finland on September 14, 2006. The application was refused by the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland (later the NBPR) on the grounds that the mark is a generic term used

in the common language and is therefore not capable of distinguishing the goods and services covered by the application from those of other

traders.

How might Finnish event marketers protect themselves?

For example ...

• Running public relations campaigns about ambush marketers

• Issuing public announcements against companies who ambush

• Printing of detailed news paper articles describing the actions of ambushers

Alternative Approaches

• Long-term sponsorship of events• Using multiple marketing tools alongside

sponsorship such as:– Purchasing saturation broadcast coverage and

investing heavily in advertising to activate sponsorship– Using an event’s identifying elements in packaging

and organising related promotion campaigns and point-of-sale strategies

– In collaboration with the event organising related events for its target market

References

•Farrelly F. J., Quester P. G. and Greyser S. A. (2005). Defending the co-branding benefits of sponsorship B2B partnerships: The case of ambush marketing. Journal of Advertising Research, 45 (3), 339-348•French Olympic Committee – CNOSF- (2006). La protection des marques et du territoire Olympiques, CNOSF Conference, 24th of January 2006, Paris, France•Meenaghan, T. (1994).Ambush marketing: immoral or imaginative practice? Journal of Advertising Research, 34 (5), 77-88•Sandler, D. M. and Shani, D. (1989) Olympic sponsorship vs. ambush marketing: who gets the gold?, Journal of Advertising Research, 29 (4), 9-14•Walliser B. (2006). Le parrainage - Sponsoring et Mécénat. Paris: Dunod

Further Reading