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| As would be expected, along with increasing viewership and increasingly prohibitory sponsorship costs, ambush marketing has developed into an art form. FIFA says such tactics "lack decency and creativity." Indecent? Maybe. Uncreative? Anything but. Highlights in ambush marketing history include:
- 1984 Olympics: Kodak sponsors TV broadcasts of the games as well as the US track team despite Fuji being the official sponsor. Fuji returns the favor in kind during the Seoul 1988 games of which Kodak is the official sponsor.
- At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics Nike sponsors press conferences with the US basketball team despite Reebok being the games’ official sponsor.
- In the greatest ambush marketing feat of all time Nike’s man Michael Jordan, Air Sponsorship himself, accepts the gold medal for basketball and covers up the Reebok logo on his kit.
- 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway: In response to official-sponsor Visa’s claims that American Express is not accepted at the Olympic Village, AmEx creates an ad campaign claiming (correctly) that Americans do not need “visas” to travel to Norway. The 1994 Visa-AmEx affair was a continuation of a scrap featuring the exact same campaigns from the 1992 Winter Olympics.
- 1998 World Cup, France: Nike again.
- 2000 Sydney Olympics: Qantas Airlines’ slogan "The Spirit of Australia" sounds strikingly similar to the games’ slogan "Share the Spirit." Qantas claims it’s just a coincidence to the sound of official-sponsor Ansett Air helplessly banging its fists on the conference room table.
- 2002 Boston Marathon: Nike strikes again. As adidas-sponsored runners come off the course they are treated to spray-painted ‘swooshes’ honoring the day of the race, but not the race itself.
And where does the law stand in such cases of ambush marketing? Usually somewhere out of view. Unlike piracy or counterfeiting, ambush marketing cases are rarely actionable, especially if the ambushers know what they are doing. In 1992 the granddaddy of boy bands New Kids on the Block sought legal action against newspaper USA Today, when it set up a charge-per-call service asking readers to tell them what they thought of the New Kids. The New Kids’ suit (like their careers), ended unfavorably.
For those finding themselves on the working end of an ambush marketing campaign, the real question is one of ethics. Is ambush marketing an ethical business practice? The ambush marketing cases that get the most press are those involving heavyweight brands with massive resources, such as Nike, adidas and Reebok or Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Between such large and equal players, ambush marketing is deemed a last ditch technique to use when no other forms of competition are available – the corporate sponsorship answer to Mutually Assured Destruction.
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However, for some, ambush marketing is the only way to compete. To become the official sponsor of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Anheuser-Busch paid more than US$ 50 million. In accordance with its agreement, it got all rights to use the word "Olympic" and the five-rings logo. Schirf Brewery, a local (and very small) company, came up with the rather ingenious (and apparently legal) idea of marking its delivery trucks with "Wasutch Beers. The Unofficial Beer. 2002 Winter Games." In accordance with copyright rules, Schirf had avoided using either the word 'Olympics' or the five-ringed logo. However, it had without a doubt connected itself to the games. One might be more inclined to sympathize with the woes of a local microbrewery over, say, adidas. In other words, does Goliath have an unfair competition claim against David?Is ambush marketing simply a natural evolution in a game where the stakes are so high that quaint ideas like Kant's categorical imperative and the Golden Rule are perversely unrealistic? It would appear so. Probably the most outright and unapologetic (not to mention successful) brand to embrace ambush marketing is Nike. If you are a major footwear producer, Nike has ambushed you: Converse in Los Angeles in 1984; Reebok in Atlanta in 1996; adidas on just about every continent in every two or four year competition.
Strategically avoiding sponsoring events and thus exposing itself to its own tactics, Nike instead sponsors teams or individuals. In the upcoming 2002 World Cup, sponsored by adidas, many of the top teams such as Brazil are outfitted entirely in Nike gear. In this, adidas has no recourse. Nike also sponsored the US hockey team at the 2002 Winter Olympics and got plenty of exposure despite not paying the Olympic Organizing Committee a penny. In addition to such focused sponsorship, Nike is spending US$ 18 million on its 2002 World Cup ambush by funding bus-side screens to display the latest scores and hosting a mysterious "Scorpion" tournament featuring some of the world's best footballers.
Nike’s ambush of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics is still seen as the ambush of all ambushes. Saving the US$ 50 million that an official sponsorship would have cost, Nike plastered the city in billboards, handed out swoosh banners to wave at the competitions and erected an enormous Nike center overlooking the stadium. The tactics devastated the International Olympic Committee’s credibility and spooked other organizations such as FIFA into adopting more assertive anti-ambushing strategies.
The result of all of Nike’s ambushing appears to pay off though. Following the 1996 Atlanta debacle, many thought Nike had been an official sponsor of the games. More recently, a December 2001 study found that, from a list of 45 likely sponsors of the 2002 World Cup, 20 percent of those polled picked Nike. Rick Burton, executive director of Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon, points out the obvious, "Nike has done nothing illegal." Simon Pestridge, Nike’s brand manager, explains more diplomatically in an interview with MSNBC in February of this year: "Nike likes to come at things from a different angle."
Industry agreement is that, while getting ambushed is as inevitable as taxes and that other thing, there are steps a brand can take to minimize the damage. Merrill Squires, managing partner of the Dallas-based Marketing Arm, said in a 1999 interview with ABCnews.com, "The weak link is marketers who sign a sponsorship deal and don’t look at it carefully. They need to negotiate for every potential right to block out competitors." This blocking out is an option the Olympics offers sponsors, giving them first crack at all available commercial time or billboard spaces in their industries. Unfortunately, marketers don’t always take advantage of such offers, considering them potentially too costly.
Obviously, as ambush marketing becomes more and more widespread – and acceptable – the biggest losers will be the events themselves. Organizations such as the Olympic Organizing Committee and FIFA rely on the revenue from corporate sponsorship for survival. As brand marketers increasingly view "official" sponsorship as equivalent to flushing wads of cash down a bottomless toilet, organizers will become more and more strapped for the means with which to host the events.
With more questions and accusations than answers, the bottom line is that ambushing is probably just the next step on the marketing evolutionary ladder. Never a gentle industry to begin with and with consumers becoming increasingly conscious about being the end of the means, brands that spend their time sniveling about "fairness" will most likely have little audience for their whimpers. Adidas America spokesperson Travis Gonzolez sums up the ambush marketing debate, "If everyone throws up their logos, it’s all-out war." Nike’s Pestridge, ever the diplomat: "We play inside the rules and we bring a different point of view that’s true and authentic to sport."
"Sport," George Orwell once said, bridging both, "is just war minus the shooting."
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| | Abram D. Sauer is a writer currently living in New York. He was a columnist for The China Daily while living in Beijing and is co-founder of Chopstickfactory.com . |
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