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Ambush marketing can be defined as a tactic whereby a company attempts to ambush or undermine the sponsorship activities of a rival that owns the legal rights to sponsor an event; often involves creating the sense that they, and not the actual sponsor, are associated with the owners of the event or activity.
Sounds kind of sneaky and underhand... but that seems to appeal to a lot of Marketers and I for one look for opportunities to exploit this notion online... although more difficult to do, this strategy still offers many of the same advantages to it's offline equivalent.
Ambush marketing is opportunistic. It’s core goal is to take advantage of situations which allow brands/products to get extra exposure at minimal cost.
Say for example, the 2010 world cup in South Africa. Ambush marketing aims to gain association with the World Cup by piggybacking off the good will associated with the event and its good reputation and without the organizers receiving any money.
Now, that will be something most brands would love- get maximum exposure through minimalist budgets.. there are some well known examples of this offline to illustrate the basic idea:
- Bavaria’s Brewery – At the 2006 World Cup in Germany over 1,000 Dutch fans arrived at the stadium in Stuttgart. FIFA refused them entry as they were wearing branded pants for the beer company Bavaria, when the official sponsor was Budweiser. They were allowed to enter the stadium after removing the offending item of clothing… and so they all watched the game in their underwear.
- 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.
There are many other examples around but these go to highlight the basic idea of ambush marketing.
So how can we exploit these notions online?
One simple way is to monitor the stories being promoted on digg.com, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc and insert comments with links to your website. When the story hits the frontpage or gradually accumulates visibility your links will also gain exposure... Another way is to become an expert in Linkedin Questions or Yahoo Answers and responding/answering relevant questions and plugging a link to your website.
I guess using social media will become the new digital hunting ground for ambush marketing... find a fan page or online group and start to squat. Drip in new messages, photo and video content. Find the right groups/fan pages and you potentially have 10's millions of pageviews and now new found exposure at little to no cost...
If you have any new ideas then log in and post in the comments section.
Written on Thursday, 04 March 2010 21:03 by Matt McDougall
