AMBUSH MARKETING

What exactly is Ambush Marketing?

The term Ambush Marketing is coined by marketing guru Jerry Walsh. Ambush Marketing is such a situation where a company or brand spends billions of dollars to become the title sponsor of a major event and another rival company or brand tries to take advantage of this by cleverly connecting with the event without paying any sponsorship fee. More important is that when a company gets an exclusive right to that event then generally no rival companies enter the event directly. But through this type of marketing, the ambusher (we will call the company which seeks for ambush marketing) creates campaigns and advertisements through which it tries to confuse the customer by showing its own affiliation to the event. Ambush marketing is effective as it attracts consumers at the disbursal of the rivals, undermining an events integrity and most importantly its ability to attract future sponsors.

What does it mean when you see such kind of marketing strategy? It means that regardless of controversial the strategy may be whenever a company finds some opportunity or a potentially lethal marketing technique it wont stop from employing it even if it may get short term benefits. Most of the time the ambusher doesnt have a fixed goal or strategy on how to approach the case but they aim mainly on how to win over their competitors campaign. For example, if you approach a convention sponsored by your competitor and you distribute freebies like T-shirts or caps to the audience. The audience would not only love to take the free stuff but also would wear them. In this way an entry would be made by you to the event. Imagine a summit organized by Google and you have 100 people wearing Yahoo T-shirts or outside an Airtel event you distribute free Sims of Vodafone to a select few. In this highly competitive world companies would resort to any idea or techniques to capture the attention of the consumer. The term ambush is used to connote the older method of warfare in the present era of commercialization, competition and advertisement. Ambush marketing is usually employed at the times of big sporting events, where big corporations cash is on the names of the sporting events without paying the requisite fee, which constitutes the crux of direct ambush advertising. However, it is not sporting events only which become the mode of deploying ambush marketing. Of late, India has witnessed a spurt in the cases of ambush marketing even without any association with the sporting events.

The objectives of ambush marketing are twofold: 1. To get maximum returns on the marketing buck and 2. To undermine the branding efforts of the rivals by stealing the attention, increasing the clutter and confusing the viewers.

Types of Ambush Marketing

Ambush Marketing - Growth In India Ambush marketing was first witnessed in 1984 Olympics and the 1996 Cricket World Cup which highlighted the concept in India. During the 1996 World Cup, although Coca Cola was the official sponsor of the tournament, Pepsi ambushed the campaign by coming up with the tagline nothing official about it. India as a nation thrives on cricket as its staple sport. To tackle the issue of direct ambush marketing in cricket tournaments, the ICC and BCCI came up with an agreement for the players in the year 2003, whereby the players were prohibited from appearing in advertisements for companies which were competitors for the sponsoring company. However, the contract just became the focus of a controversy and did not see the light of the day. In recent times, the nation has been a witness to hoarding ambush advertisements. Jet Airways came up with an ad campaign saying Weve changed! To ambush the campaign, Kingfisher airlines came up with Weve made them change which was further ambushed by Go Airways saying Weve not changed. We are still the smartest way to fly. The hoardings in this case, were placed in the city of Mumbai in a vertical sequence. The campaigns proved to be a funny sight to the city but a slap in the face of competitors as each competitor was feeding into the campaign of the other. However, the latest war was between Hindustan Unilevers shampoo brand Dove and Procter & Gambles shampoo brand Pantene. P&G launched its intriguing ad campaign for Pantene with the tagline A mystery shampoo. Eighty percent women say it is better than anything else. A few days later and before P&G could launch the new Pantene, Hindustan Unilever ambushed the campaign by placing an adjacent hoarding with the tagline There is no mystery. Dove is the No. 1 shampoo., thus ambushing Pantenes campaign. In the examples described above, the ambushed company cannot avail of any specific legal remedy. The advertising campaign can only be considered an unfair trade practice, the remedy for enforcement of which is not very clear. Ambush advertising can be trapped in the legal web by legislations like The Trade Mark Act, 1999 or The Copyright Act, 1957 when it is direct. However, the two examples described above, use the indirect ambush which cannot be trapped under any specific legislation and it leaves the underdog brand in a tight spot. Thus, the need of the present hour is for the Indian government to provide for some specific legislation which lay down a prescribed behavior for advertisements.

In the 2003 case of ICC vs. Arvee Enterprises and Philips, the Delhi High Court, while recognizing the alleged act as ambush marketing categorically stated that such acts were not in fact prohibited under current Indian law. FIFA 2010 A mecca for Ambusher It is no surprise that the ambushers are best prepared when stakes are the highest. And the stakes are never higher than the mega events like FIFA World Cup. This 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa saw many marketing events related to ambush marketing. Many biggies like Nike and Pepsi came to the arena with Adidas and Coca-Cola, the main rivals respectively as the event sponsors. Nike came up with an advertisement campaign with featured players in their National Team jersey and with Nike logo on nine of the participating teams just three less than Adidas. Moreover the campaign had posters and videos which showed the Nike as the main sponsor of FIFA but in reality it was all ambush marketing. The campaign was taken to the internet media through social networking forums and video sharing websites. The Write Your Headline Write The Future campaign on Facebook and Twitter and the best submission would be put on electric faade of the Life Centre building in Johannesburg.The star-studded advertisement featuring Rooney, Drogba and Ronaldinho made the most visited and liked video on YouTube. These strategies made Nike a bigger and more recognizable brand than any of the official sponsors.

Impacts of Ambush marketing Increasing cost of sponsorships: The increasing cost of sponsorships has also increased sponsor's emphasis on return-on-investment. If sponsored events do not give exclusivity, the sponsor's interest on sponsorship property will be lost and the damage will extend to the whole sponsorship market. Yet when that exclusivity is lost, the value of sponsorship is also lost. When a company engages in ambush marketing the exclusivity intended to be conferred through sponsorship to a sponsor is lost. Hence, the value of sponsorship is also lost. As it is an undeniable fact that corporate sponsorship is one of the biggest money-spinning sources of revenue for the event organizers, the loss in sponsorship value will affect the financial strength of an event organizer. Transgression on the intellectual property rights: Even when the ambush marketers are not making any direct references to the protected intellectual property rights, they in effect transgress those intellectual property rights by attempting to capitalize on such hard earned goodwill from an event. Direct and indirect references to the event symbol or the event itself are just different means for achieving illegal transgression on the rights of event organizers. Moreover, sponsors cannot get the return they anticipated.

Is Ambush Marketing Ethical ? Ambush advertisements are an enticing and thrilling mode of advertising. Although ambush advertisement mars the campaign of the first brand, it ends up giving a lot of publicity to both the brands. The campaign sells like hot cakes amongst the media and captures the mindscape of the consumer in seconds. The ethical concerns over ambush marketing are a controversy in itself. Ambush marketing is just an aggressive behavior observed in the commercial arena but it definitely does not revolve around fair practices. Thus, there is a need to draw a line and where it should be drawn has to be decided by a prescribed mode of legislation There are no strict laws in such cases for ambush marketing. Unlike piracy or counterfeiting, ambush marketing cases are rarely actionable, especially if the ambushers know what they are doing. To be present on the working end of an ambush marketing campaign, the question is one of ethics. Is ambush marketing an ethical business practice? The ambush marketing cases which come to mind are those big brands with massive resources, such as Nike and Adidas or Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Between such equal players, ambush marketing is deemed as a last technique to use when no other forms of competition or strategy are available.