What Is Ambush Marketing?

Ambush Marketing might be the sneakiest, most devious, and controversial forms of marketing. Despite all this, it can be very effective. Recently at the British Open Hugo Boss pulled off a great example of Ambush Marketing. They parked their sail boat off of the waters of Turnberry, Scotland where the tournament was being held. They seemed to be following Tiger Woods, which makes a lot of sense since he would be the one with the most air time. Problem was Hugo Boss wasn’t an official sponsor. Ambush marketing is a form of marketing in which a group takes advantage of an event (that is usually highly publicized, documented, and seen by many) but with no affiliation with the event and no fee is paid.

Many see ambush marketing as immoral; regardless, many big brands have used it now, and in the past. Here are some more examples:

* Hugo Boss- 2009: Hugo Boss sailboat follows Tiger Woods off the shore of the British Open
* Bavaria’s Brewery - 2006: Bavaria’s Brewery was removed from fans of the Netherlands because Budweiser was the official beer sponsor.
* Nike - 2002: Despite the 2002 Boston Marathon being sponsored by Adidas, Nike supplied the runners with spray painted swooshes that commemorated the day of the race, but not the race itself (clever).
* Qantas Airlines- 2000: In the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the slogan for the games was “Share the Spirit.” Qantas airlines adopted a slogan “The Spirit of Australia” despite the fact that Ansett Air was the official airline sponsor.
* Nike – 1998: Despite Adidas being the sponsor of the 1998 FIFA World Cup, Nike decided to sponsor individual teams.
* Nike – 1992: In the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, Michael Jordan (sponsored by Nike) covered the Reebok sign on his gear while accepting his gold medal for USA basketball. Nike also sponsored the press conference for the “Dream Team” even though Reebok was their official sponsor

What does this mean? It means that regardless of how controversial the strategy may be, whenever there is a cost effective and potentially useful marketing technique, it’s dumb not to take advantage of it. For example, you can go to an event that is sponsored by your competitor, and hand out free t-shirts for your company. Not only do people like free stuff (especially t-shirts) but some of those people might even wear them in the event. Imagine one hundred people wearing Yahoo t-shirts at a Google convention, or a thousand people wearing free Coca Cola gear at a Pepsi event. In this world where a dollar is hard to come by, its dog eat dog.

So how could this strategy be applied to internet marketing? On social media sites, possibly through Twitter or various companies’ Facebook fan pages, there are opportunities for ambush marketing. You can use TweetDeck and use a saved search to be alerted on relevant tweets then send a direct message with your company information. Also, answering relevant questions on forums and plugging a link to your website or blog. There are more free ways to do ambush marketing on the internet but it takes a more clever strategy. Do you have any internet ambush marketing strategies? Share and let’s discuss them.

By: Mel Joelle

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