Number 19: Summer 2002
Ambush Marketing: What it is, what it isn'tJerry Welsh
Editor's comment: In the middle of the football World Cup one cannot fail to be aware of ambush or guerilla marketing. With a large number of brands undertaking effective football-related promotional activity, the question needs to be asked whether there is any real value in being an official sponsor of such an event.
A while ago, I accessed the search engine "Google" to see what's new in Ambush Marketing. Surprisingly, I saw page after page of entries on Ambush Marketing, a term I coined years ago when I was at American Express.
I was shocked, however, to encounter the mindless drivel that now must be passing for legitimate commentary on Ambush Marketing, which evidently has come to mean -- to some, mostly sports event organizers, I suspect -- something akin to commercial theft. Believing that there is no better time than now to return to the realm of common sense in talking of competitive Marketing, and simultaneously to expose self-serving pleading in the guise of disinterested intellectual commentary, I'm writing this brief piece assaying the origins and principles of Ambush Marketing.
The roots of Ambush Marketing can be found in several phenomena typical of modern sponsorships: the escalating prices for, and often the distressed imagery of, category-exclusive sponsorships; in their routinely poor packaging and in their flawed presentation to potential sponsors; and in the increasing level of marketing competition in major categories of consumer products and services.
In explaining the practice of Ambush Marketing, and in noting its virtual necessity in modern competitive business practice, and in advocating its desirability -- indeed its inevitability -- there is no need to discuss ethics or morality. Companies routinely compete, mostly, we hope and expect, honestly and hard; and Ambush Marketing, correctly understood and rightly practiced, is an important, ethically correct, competitive tool in a non-sponsoring company's arsenal of business- and image-building-- weapons. To think otherwise is either not to understand -- or willfully to misrepresent -- the meaning of Ambush Marketing and its significance for good -- and winning -- marketing practice.
To begin with the unarguably obvious, it is true that, in major sponsorships packaged for sale, there is room for only one company or product in each available category. Event organizers hope to sell their event-sponsoring wares at an auction among major intra-category competitors; after all, that's their game, their core business. Those companies who want to buy, or can afford to buy, often do buy; others must consider their marketing alternatives.
Let's acknowledge that, given the already high and continually rising prices for some of these sponsorships, it is hardly surprising that some companies willingly pass on the opportunity to sponsor, and undertake the search for ways to compete in the sponsored space without bearing the onerous costs, and often the heavy burden, of the scandals and other misadventures often associated with large modern sponsored properties, particularly some of those in professional sports.
The point to understand is that, in buying a sponsorship, a company buys only that specific, packaged product, offered as it is, with its constituent parts and attendant rights (and its liabilities). In sponsoring, the company does not thereby purchase the rights to all avenues leading to the public's awareness of that property; and, more importantly, the company does not buy the rights to the entire thematic space in which the purchased property is usually only one resident.
In other words, all else other than that which is specifically purchased is up for commercial grabs. That's as it should be in sponsorship and as it is in the larger world of both commerce and life: when you own and license Kermit you have only given the rights you own to one specific frog - not to all frogs, and maybe not even to all green ones.
Non-sponsors who are sophisticated about marketing begin by asking themselves the basic question about the thematic space in which the sponsorship exits: "Do I want to be identified with the ideas, images, and events in this sponsored space?" In the case of the Olympics, for example, do I as a non-sponsoring marketer want my products or services identified with this generic space of sport, and more specifically, Olympic-type sporting events? If so, then I begin to look for ways to purchase the imagery and values of the Olympics in properties and events other than those specifically Olympic-sponsored.
If my competitor has just spent, say, $100 million to secure the Olympics sponsorship, that gives me roughly the same amount (assuming I want parity in marketing expenditures with my competitor) to get a similar benefit for my product or service without sponsoring the Olympics. So long as I do nothing to claim that I'm indeed an Olympic sponsor, and so long as I refrain from any other action or claim directly misleading to the public, then I'm free to pursue other Olympic-related activities (e.g., television advertising on the Olympics broadcasts, perhaps onsite events, and customer entertainment in the Olympic city), or non-Olympic -- but nevertheless sports-related -- activities and similar sponsorships (national teams, former Olympic athletes, children's athletic causes and programs in Olympic-featured sports) to underscore my company's support of, and dedication to, the thematic space which Olympic sports occupy.
The argument that, if I'm an inventive non-sponsor, mining the sponsored thematic space in a clever way, the public may come to think of me as an Olympic sponsor, is not an argument supporting non-ambushing activities, but is rather a possible testament to the marketing skills of a non-sponsoring competitor. What the public perceives in the world of sponsorship is interesting grist for the marketing pollsters, but is hardly the stuff of which business morality should be gauged. Marketers routinely portray their wares in the best possible light; and in times when sponsored properties are on attractive display, the positive association with that thematic space -- if not with the specific sponsored property -- is the natural, and altogether legitimate, inclination of marketing professionals.
The contrary notion, put forward largely by sloppy event organizers, that non-sponsors have a moral or ethical obligation to market themselves totally away from the thematic space of a sponsored property, is simply nonsense which smart marketers have long recognized as a commercial non-starter, as well as an intellectual affront. Sponsors have bought a specific property; they have not bought a thematic space. Accordingly, they have no right to police, protect, and otherwise administer what they have not bought, have not created, and, therefore, do not own.
Once a sponsorship has been undertaken, then the real marketing games begin, assuming only that non-sponsors want to occupy the thematic space that the sponsors -- by virtue of their having paid the fee -- now occupy. The competitive thinking goes like this: what programs, events, and other similar promotions can one do, within the space, to get the marketing benefits, without having paid the fee for the sponsorship in that space.
What's wrong with that? Where's the "parasitic marketing," to quote a favorite phrase of the putatively aggrieved event organizers and their sponsors? Smart marketing is "parasitic" only to those who foolishly have not sufficiently covered their sponsorships with adequate, anti-competitive bulletproofing. As your competitor, I do not have the ethical obligation to make sure that your sponsorship is successful. I could -- but will not do so here -- argue that the reverse obligation may well be the appropriate ethical and practical stance for me.
Ambush Marketing ought to be understood simply as a marketing strategy with its programmatic outcomes, occupying the thematic space of a sponsoring competitor, and formulated to vie with that sponsoring competitor for marketing preeminence. Successful ambush strategies feed on ill-conceived sponsorships and inept sponsors; in that regard, Ambush Marketing is the natural result of healthy competition and has the long-range effect of making sponsored properties more valuable, not less, in that successful ambushes, over time, help to weed out inferior sponsorship propositions.
What Ambush Marketing is not, clearly, is some underhanded attempt to take advantage of sponsored properties without paying the associated fees. As I've indicated, the marketing decision around sponsorships involves the trade-off analysis of the sponsorship costs, liabilities, and the extent to which the sponsorship, if purchased, can de defended against successful ambush. This is but another way to ask the simple question of whether or not the sponsorship, as offered, is really commercially viable, or worth anything approximating its cost in the marketplace of available marketing propositions.
In the world of modern marketing, sponsor and ambusher are not moral labels to be assigned by the self-appointed arbiters of ethics, but merely the names to be given to two different -- and complementary, if competing -- roles played by competitors vying for consumer loyalty and recognition in the same thematic space.
So that is the story of Ambush Marketing. I trust that I won't have to consult "Google!" again in the near future, only to be horrified at what an unrecognizable ogre has been made of my beautiful, conceptual marketing child, Ambush Marketing.
Pool Version 2.0
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