1. Ambush Marketing
Innovative or Immoral?

5. What’s wrong
with these pictures?

7. Consider also ITB Berlin and
Germanwings …

8. Learning Objectives
At the end of this session you should be able
to:
• Distinguish between sponsorship, ambush
marketing, incidental ambush and other
communication tools
• Understand the benefits of ambush marketing
• List various ambush marketing strategies
• Develop strategies to prevent ambush
marketing opportunities and enhance event-
sponsor partnership

9. What is Ambush
Marketing?
“... a planned effort by an organisation
to associate themselves indirectly
with an event in order to gain at least
some of the recognition and benefits
that are associated with being a
sponsor.”
(Sandler and Shani, 1989: p11)

10. Definitions of Ambush
Marketing
Meenaghan (1994) The practice whereby another company, often a
competitor, intrudes upon public attention surrounding the
event, thereby deflecting attention toward themselves and
away from the sponsor.
CNOSF (French A set of behaviours by which an economic agent lurks in the
Olympic wake of another in order to take advantage, free of charge, of
Committee, 2006) his efforts and skills.
Walliser (2006) A technique where an advertiser who does not hold official
sponsorship rights, notably for an event, tries to make the
public believe the contrary.
Farrelly, Quester Striving to catch an illicit ride on an event’s wave by deceiving
and Greyser (2005) or confusing consumers into believing a company is an official
sponsor.

11. Goals of Ambush
Marketing
• To hijack the intrinsic values of an event and
take advantage, for the least possible cost
• To improve the ambusher’s brand reputation
and transfer the positive aspects of the event
to its brand
• To mislead the public into thinking the
ambush marketer is something it’s not
• To weaken the link between the official
sponsors and the event by creating confusion
about sponsors’ identities

12. The Ambush Marketer’s
Toolkit
• Event broadcasters
• People related to event (e.g. athletes, coach,
team, retired athletes, dead athletes, and
commentators)
• Symbols of the activity (e.g. fields, balls, uniforms
and tickets)
• Symbols of the place (e.g. arenas, cities, countries
and monuments)
• Unprotected symbols of the event (e.g. colours,
generic names, generic sentences, generic goods
and congratulatory messages)

13. Event Broadcasters &
Ambush Marketers
• Many different brands
(ambushers) will claim
to ‘proudly bring’ to
audiences in different
countries the same
event, sponsored by yet
another brand, that of
the official sponsor!

14. Sponsors of Athletes &
Other Personalities
• They will often try to
gain some of the
reflected glory of a
major event by running
an advertising campaign
featuring their
sponsored personalities
when those individuals
are participating in that
event

15. Ambushing Symbols
• Associating the
ambushing company/its
brands/its products
with the venue where
the event takes place
• Using or “ambushing”
symbols or themes, or
even musical tunes in
its advertising, typically
used by an the event

16. Other Common
Ambushing Tactics
• Saturating the physical environment of the
event, or any available advertising space
around it
• Seeking a sponsorship association with a
related property, in order to secure access to
an event for which it is not entitled to claim
sponsor status
• Creating a competing and simultaneous
event to coincide and divert from the
sponsored event

17. Ambushers Vs
Official Sponsors
• Although their tactics appear very similar
ambush marketers cannot be confused
with sponsors because they:
– Do not have an official agreement with the
event
– Have no right to use protected imagery of the
event
– Cannot do public relations at event venues
IF AMBUSH MARKETERS ARE FOUND DOING ANY OF
THE ABOVE THE WILL BE GUILTY OF COPYRIGHT
INFRIGEMENT

18. Accidental Ambush
Marketers
• It is also possible for
the confusion that
ambush marketers
seek to create to occur
unintentionally causing
an incidental ambush
marketing effect
PUMA 2010 Advertisment

19. Accidental or
Intentional?
What is this Ad showing?

20. Accidental or
Intentional?

21. Ambushing Right
or Wrong?
THOSE IN FAVOUR THOSE OPPOSED

22. Consider ...
SMALL PRODUCERS SUCH AS BAVARIA BREWERY
HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO RESORT TO AMBUSH
MARKETING AS THEY WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO
AFFORD OFFICIAL SPONSORSHIP OF A MEGA-EVENT

23. However ...
The fact is mega-events
such as the Olympic
Games cannot exist
without multi-national
firms and their levels of
investment in them.

24. How Can Event Marketers
Stop Ambushers
• Legal measures – registering copyright and
trademarks
• Enacting an event act such as the ‘Olympic Marks
Act’ to provide protection for symbols and
phrases which though traditionally cannot be
copyrighted or trademarked will be protected for
a limited time
• Designating event venues as clean zones
• On-site monitoring and patrols
• Name and shaming ambush marketers

25. For example ...
The Vancouver Olympics protected ...
• ‘Faster, higher, stronger’
• Canadian Olympic Committee
• International Olympic Committee
• Olympic
• Olympic Games
• 2010 Canada

26. For example ...
• Forbidding of spectators
wearing clothing with
large logos
• Covering up or
destroying
unauthorised
signage, message or
logos
• Restricting the size of
logos on players’
uniforms

27. However here in Finland …
• Finnish legislation does not contain any specific
provisions on the protection of trademarks or
other designations relating to Major Sports or
other
• Neither Trademark Act nor any other national
legislation in Finland provides for specific
protection against Ambush Marketing as such.
• The only legislation available is standard
legislation for trade marks and intellectual
property and those governing ethical business
practice

28. For example …
The Finnish Olympic Committee applied for registration
of the word mark OLYMPIALAISET (meaning in English
“Olympic Games”) in Finland on September 14, 2006.
The application was refused by the National Board of
Patents and Registration of Finland (later the NBPR)
on the grounds that the mark is a generic term used
in the common language and is therefore not
capable of distinguishing the goods and services
covered by the application from those of other
traders.

29. How might Finnish event
marketers protect themselves?

30. For example ...
• Running public
relations campaigns
about ambush
marketers
• Issuing public
announcements
against companies who
ambush
• Printing of detailed
news paper articles
describing the actions
of ambushers

31. Alternative Approaches
• Long-term sponsorship of events
• Using multiple marketing tools alongside
sponsorship such as:
– Purchasing saturation broadcast coverage and
investing heavily in advertising to activate sponsorship
– Using an event’s identifying elements in packaging
and organising related promotion campaigns and
point-of-sale strategies
– In collaboration with the event organising related
events for its target market

32. References
•Farrelly F. J., Quester P. G. and Greyser S. A. (2005). Defending the co-
branding benefits of sponsorship B2B partnerships: The case of ambush
marketing. Journal of Advertising Research, 45 (3), 339-348
•French Olympic Committee – CNOSF- (2006). La protection des marques
et du territoire Olympiques, CNOSF Conference, 24th of January
2006, Paris, France
•Meenaghan, T. (1994).Ambush marketing: immoral or imaginative
practice? Journal of Advertising Research, 34 (5), 77-88
•Sandler, D. M. and Shani, D. (1989) Olympic sponsorship vs. ambush
marketing: who gets the gold?, Journal of Advertising Research, 29 (4), 9-
14
•Walliser B. (2006). Le parrainage - Sponsoring et Mécénat. Paris: Dunod

33. Further Reading