Ambush Marketing

Imagine: you throw a lavish party for your friends and it burns a hole in your pocket. Now imagine your room-mate walking in, claiming to be a co-sponsor of the party without chipping in with a penny; this situation is sure to more than just infuriate you. Such things happen, more so in business! Try asking P&G, the FMCG behemoth, about the harms of Ambush Marketing, the group will surely testify about it. Recently, P&G conceived an elaborate plan to relaunch one of its shampoo brands Pantene on 1st August, 2010. To build anticipation, on 23rd July, P&G promptly put up the hoarding across Mumbai which said, ‘A Mystery Shampoo!! 80% women say is better than anything else’. This seemed to be a perfect opportunity for arch rival HUL to go one up against P&G. On 28th July, Mumbai woke up to a HUL hoarding announcing ‘There is no mystery. Dove is the No.1 shampoo’. (Dove is one of the shampoo brands of HUL). HUL simply hijacked P&G’s campaign and made no bones about its source of inspiration. All P&G could manage was to issue a statement saying “One of our international competitors has been consistently trying to denigrate our brands, via either disparaging advertising or unsubstantiated claims across categories.” Well, our heart does go out to P&G, unfortunately that’s how ambush marketing works. Although this type of marketing is probably one of the most devious and unscrupulous ways of marketing, it could be very effective in augmenting sales.

Ambush marketing started off as a strategy for companies to promote their products at events without actually paying the sponsorship fees. However, with time companies are now gradually expanding the scope of ambush marketing. It is very effective in damaging the competitor’s campaign and at the same time attracting consumers towards your brand. Indian advertisers have not taken to ambush marketing as openly as their western counterparts. Exceptions to the norm are companies like Jet and Kingfisher, Coke and Pepsi. In 1996, Coke bagged the official sponsorship of the Cricket World Cup and Pepsi reacted with a catch line of “Nothing Official about it’. The recently concluded FIFA World Cup also saw an instance of ambush marketing when Bavaria, a rival of Budweiser, the official sponsor of the football world cup, kicked off the sale of Bavaria T-shirts prior to the tournament as well as at the event. The FIFA authorities deemed this to be illegal act and accused the so-called "Bavaria Babes" of ambush marketing. This is not the first time something like this has happened during sports events. In 1998, Carlsberg paid USD 21 million to be the official sponsor of the Euro 2008, while its rival Heineken distributed a few Heineken caps among the fans that were clearly visible on the television close-ups.

  
Indeed, ambush marketing as a concept has more significance in terms of Sports Marketing. In case of gala sports events like Cricket World Cup or Football World Cup or an NFL, the stakes of sponsoring the events are very high. Hence, there is a strong consensus that ambush marketing can pose a huge risk for advertisers seeking sponsorships at sporting events as millions of dollars spent sponsoring an event could count for nothing if a competitor ambushes your campaign. Therefore, it has a strong potential to adversely impact the events itself. This has led sports governing bodies like the FIFA and International Olympic Association (IOA) to take strict action against ambush marketing advocates.

There is no doubt that this type of marketing is very opportunistic in nature and envisages gaining maximum attention for a brand by spend minimum capital. Despite being controversial in nature, Ambush marketing could prove to be an effective marketing technique. This is especially true in case of online marketing. For instance, controversies equal popularity and popular news stories/blogs are easily chanced upon by people/companies who track back to the source and/or leave a comment. When the popularity of news stories increases, even the traffic to your website shoots up. This technique could be very useful in gaining more friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter as well. There are many ways of doing ambush marketing   the internet. If done with a bit of prudence, it could prove to be very fruitful.