Ambush Marketing

Ambush Marketing is a marketing strategy wherein the advertisers associate themselves with, and therefore capitalize on, a particular event without paying any sponsorship fee.

History

The word "ambush" as used in the expression ambush marketing, means "an attack from a hidden position" and is derived from the old French verb embuschier, having the meaning "to place in a wood." The term "ambush marketing" was coined by marketing strategist Jerry Welsh, while he was working as the manager of global marketing efforts for the American Express Company in the 1980s.

Types of Ambush Marketing

"Direct" Ambush Marketing

• "Predatory" Ambushing: Intentional false claims to official sponsorship by a non-sponsor and/or intentional false denial by a non-sponsor concerning a market competitor's official sponsorship, in each case with the intent to confuse consumers and gain market share from the competing official sponsor.

• "Coattail" Ambushing: The attempt by a brand to directly associate itself with a property or event by "playing up" a connection that is legitimate but does not involve financial sponsorship.

• Ambushing via Trademark/Likeness Infringement: The intentional unauthorized use of protected intellectual property. Such properties can include the logos of teams or events, or making use of unauthorized references to tournaments, teams or athletes, words and symbols.

• Ambushing "By Degree": Marketing activities by an official sponsor above and beyond what has been agreed on in the sponsorship contract. For example, an "ambush by degree" of a sports event may involve a sponsor's handing out free promotional T-shirts without the permission of the sports league supervising the event. That sponsor may have already covered the stadium with its signs, or the sports league or participating teams may have made an earlier agreement – perhaps even an exclusive one – to let a different sponsor hand out shirts. In either case, ambush by degree clutters the available marketing space; takes advantage of the participating teams and supervising league to a greater extent than they permitted; and dilutes the brand exposure of official sponsors, including the other promotional efforts of the ambushing company (hence the alternative term "self-ambushing").

"Indirect" Ambush Marketing

• Ambushing "By Association": The use of imagery or terminology not protected by intellectual-property laws to create an illusion that an organization has links to a sporting event or property — This form differs from direct "coattail" ambushing in that there exists no legitimate connection between the event/property and from direct ambush by infringement in that the sponsored event/property has no property rights in the images and/or words that create the illusion.

• Values-Based Ambushing: Tailoring by a non-sponsor of its marketing practices to appeal to the same values or involve the same themes as do the event and/or its promotion, such that audiences attracted to the event or its marketing will likewise be attracted to the non-sponsor's marketing — Essentially a reversal from "push" to "pull" of the causal processes through which direct "coattail ambushers" create sponsor/event-unapproved mental association with their products, this form of ambushing differs from "ambushing by association" in that the ambushing business begins by observing the event's promotional scheme and drawing inferences as to its existing thematic content, as opposed to observing the event's audience and creating new thematic content in hopes that consumers will associate the event with the thematic content created.

• Ambushing "By Distraction": Setting up a promotional presence at or near an event, albeit without making specific reference to the event itself, its imagery, or its themes, in order to take advantage of the general public's attention toward the event and the audience members' awareness of their surroundings — This form of ambush amounts to "free riding" upon the positive externality that the event creates for the surrounding area by "anchoring" public and individual attention there; see also "Saturation ambushing" under "Incidental" ambush marketing.

• "Insurgent" Ambushing: The use of surprise street-style promotions (blitz marketing) at an event or near enough to it that the ambushing business can identify and target audience members — The "active" version of "passive" ambushing by distraction, insurgent ambushing not only takes advantage of positive externalities but creates negative externalities by intruding upon attendees' experiences of the event and detracting from those experiences' quality (cf. the distinction in biology between commensalism and parasitism).

• "Parallel Property" Ambushing: The creation or sponsorship of an event or property that bears qualitative similarity to the ambush target and competes with it for the public's attention — An application of "ambushing by distraction" in which the ambusher-marketed product is the event/property itself, parallel-property ambushing does not intrude upon the experience of audience members (who remain free to attend whichever event or patronize whichever property they deem more attractive), but it does divert audience dollars and attendance figures from the preexisting event/property, interfering with the efforts of that event's/property's financial backers to recover their largely fixed production costs.

"Incidental" Ambush Marketing

• Unintentional Ambushing: It is possible for media coverage to make passing mention of, e.g., the manufacturer of an athlete's equipment/clothing or the provider of a service used by the event's technical staff or in-person audience. Although in most cases most members of an event's mass-media audience will not infer that the mentioned business is an official sponsor of the event, such that the mention is harmless "free publicity" for the non-sponsoring business, it is possible that some broadcast-audience members will at some point draw some inference of official sponsorship.

• "Saturation" Ambushing: "Saturation ambushers" increase their broadcast-media advertising and marketing at the time of an event but make no reference to the event itself and avoid any associative imagery or suggestion — Essentially a form of "ambushing by distraction" attenuated by the absence of advertisers' physical proximity to the event and their resulting lack of contact with in-person audience members, saturation ambushing merely capitalizes on the increased broadcast media attention and television audiences surrounding the event.

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.

Limitation To Freedom Of Expression: Specific regulations (and or laws) demanded by sponsors to guarantee their exclusive rights limit the freedom of expression of visitors to events (e.g. those who have been given free goods by the ambush marketeer). It is still undecided whether the commercial rights of sports organizers and sponsors trump the universal human rights issues involved.

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