Word of the Week Archive
by Kerry Maxwell, author of Brave New Words, with recordings by speechinaction
| a marketing strategy in which a competing brand connects itself with a major sporting event without paying sponsorship fees | |
ambush marketer noun [C]                  |
‘Piles of “bootleg” water bottles have started to gather outside the gates of the All England Club in southwest London after security guards at Wimbledon thwarted an “ambush marketing” attempt by Colgate-Palmolive.’
Times Online 29th June 2005
‘In 1996, Nike, the athletic shoe and apparel maker, was the most aggressive ambush marketer of the [Olympic] Games – leasing a parking garage near Centennial Park to promote its athletes and peddle its products …’
New York Times 29th September 2000
Imagine throwing a party where you’ve invited lots of interesting people and made a huge effort to provide lovely food and drinks. Imagine your partner had absolutely no involvement in planning or funding the party, but then waltzes in at the last minute and claims all the credit for your expense and effort.
This hypothetical situation encapsulates the concept of ambush marketing, though in reality, considerably more money is involved, typically millions of dollars! Ambush marketing occurs when one product brand pays to become a sponsor of a large-scale event (usually a sporting event) and a competing brand cleverly connects itself with the same event without paying the sponsorship fee.
The most notable example of ambush marketing occurred at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, when the sportswear company Nike avoided paying the $50 million dollar sponsorship fee, successfully mounting a marketing campaign by plastering the city in billboards, handing out free banners to spectators and erecting an enormous Nike centre overlooking the stadium. Though this prompted large sporting organisations such as FIFA and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to adopt anti-ambushing strategies, ambush marketing has become more and more widespread, possibly because for some companies it is the only way to compete. At the 2005 Wimbledon tennis championships, two attempts at ambush marketing were widely reported. The company Colgate-Palmolive, sponsors of the 2004 champion Maria Sharapova, were handing out bottles of water emblazoned with a deodorant brand to fans in the queue. These were confiscated by officials since the ‘official’ water supplier to the championships was Buxton. The company later gave the water away to thirsty spectators as they left the club. A snack company was another ambush marketer, using the queues as an opportunity to raise brand awareness by handing out packets of crisps. These were also confiscated by officials and quite literally thrown in the bin!
Background
The expression ambush marketing was coined in the early nineties by marketing guru Jerry Welsh while working for the company American Express. Welsh’s original perception of ambush marketing was the idea of healthy competition in a climate of expensive and often ill-conceived sponsorships. Over time however the expression has taken on much more negative overtones, now usually thought of as something like commercial theft.
The word ambush as used in the expression usually means ‘an attack from a hidden position’ and derives from the Old French verb embuschier, meaning ‘to place in a wood’.
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This article was first published on 15th August 2005.
Subject archive: business - general