Ambush Marketing

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Usain Bolt shows his golden Puma running shoes in the cameras at the 2008 Summer Olympics, for which Adidas was the official supplier .

Under ambush marketing (also Parasite marketing or parasite marketing ) refers to marketing activities , aimed at the media attention exploit a major event without even a sponsor to be the event.

The term ambush is English and means ambush . Ambush marketing is seen as a sub-form of guerrilla marketing .

Even if the negative attribution suggests this, ambush marketing measures are only illegal in exceptional cases.

background

In the Impulse Arena in Augsburg , the word “impulse” was made unrecognizable by changing the seating for the 2010 Women's U-20 World Cup . During this tournament the stadium was called "FIFA WM Stadion Augsburg". Blue foils cover other lettering.

In particular, major sporting events such as the Olympic Games or soccer world championships are a much used framework for advertising and sponsorship . The organizers and sponsors have a massive interest in using the publicity that these events achieve exclusively for the sponsors' marketing activities. However, such exclusivity is not provided for by law. Anyone is allowed to report on the events and to use the general interest for the sporting event, provided that no copyrights , trademark rights or the house rules of the organizer are violated. For this reason, organizers and sponsors try to use lobbying work to legally expand the scope of their property rights (e.g. Olympic Protection Act ) and use their house rules and the contracts with the reporting mass media to promote reporting on the sponsors and to reduce the visibility of non -Sponsors.

For example, FIFA provides that non-FIFA sponsors cover the lettering at their tournaments so that only FIFA sponsors can benefit from the public reporting on FIFA tournaments. Companies that have rented the naming rights to football stadiums also have to forego these names during FIFA tournaments.

theory

Term and negative usage

“To ambush” means “ambushed, ambushed”. The translation shows that the term has negative connotations. German-speaking authors also use the term parasite or parasite marketing. This choice of words is intended on the one hand to denounce the competitor using ambush marketing as free riders and on the other to suggest the illegality of the procedure.

In 2002, Bartoluzzi, Dubach and Frey defined ambush marketing as “unauthorized free-riding in which an outsider benefits from an event without being a sponsor himself”. Meenaghan, for his part, describes ambush marketing as “ the practice whereby another company, often a competitor, intrudes upon public attention surrounding the event, thereby deflecting attention to themselves and away from the sponsor ” “The practice whereby another company, often a competitor, is in the public attention around an event penetrates, distracts it from it (sponsor) and tries to focus on itself. "

The following two definitions come from more recent research in sports marketing, which arose around the same time in parallel research (2010).

The following definition comes from Manuela Sachse :

"Ambush Marketing is the planned endeavor by companies that do not enter into a legal, official sponsorship commitment with an organizer of a (sports) event, to draw public attention to themselves through their own, event-related communication measures and thus benefit from the communication performance of the event (e.g. . Awareness, image) to benefit. "

. Gerd Nufer defines in a similar way:

"Ambush marketing is the approach taken by companies to signal an authorized connection to an event to the direct and indirect audience through their own marketing, in particular communication measures, although the companies concerned do not have any legalized or only underprivileged marketing rights to this event sponsored by third parties."

The aim of the free rider is to be positively associated with the event and, on the other hand, to exclude competitors from this effect. Official sponsors in particular lose part of the effect of their money invested. Often the sponsor and the Ambusher are direct competitors. A well-known example is the competition between the sporting goods manufacturers Adidas and Nike for attention at major sporting events such as the World Cup or the Olympic Games .

Features and distinction

The following characteristics of ambush marketing can be derived from the various attempts at definition:

  • Ambush Marketing is the planned attempt by a company to become associated with a sporting event without taking on an official sponsorship, and not a spontaneous decision or isolated advertising measure.
  • Ambusher and sponsor usually come from the same industry and are direct competitors.
  • The focus is not only on attracting attention, but also on the confusion of the audience regarding the connection between the sponsoring subject and the sponsor or ambusher.
  • The ambush measures are intended to shift attention from the official sponsor to the Ambusher, with the result that the communicative effect of the official sponsorship is impaired.

A distinction is made between direct and indirect ambush marketing:

  • Direct (or clumsy) ambush marketing is the use of symbols , brands , mascots or merchandising items in violation of trademarks or copyright without acquiring appropriate license rights. This is illegal and is being prosecuted in the developed world.
  • Indirect ambush marketing, on the other hand, uses the legal possibilities. A distinction is made:
    • Ambush Marketing by Intrusion : This is where advertising is done
      • carried out using its own symbols and brands in geographical proximity to the event (for example in front of the stadium) or
      • carried out in the media environment of the sporting event (for example by placing commercials in television coverage of the event) or
      • Carried out as part of publicly effective services in the context of the event (e.g. public viewing ).
    • Ambush-Marketing-by-Association : This is where the event takes place
      • used as a leitmotif for your own advertising campaign (for example football-playing surprise egg figures during a football World Cup) or
      • Advertised with participants of the events.

Competition of sponsorship contracts

The latter point is demanding under civil law. At major sporting events, there is typically competition between sponsors at different levels. The athlete himself has his sponsor, the sports club, the national sports association and possibly the international association have their own. Since the respective sponsors can (and usually are) competitors, it must be contractually regulated when which sponsors have which rights.

Here it often happens that the brand manufacturer X (who is the sponsor of the athlete) places advertising with this athlete during a sporting event and the brand manufacturer Y (who is the sponsor of the event) criticizes this as ambush marketing.

Appearances and goals

If you go through the individual shapes one after the other, it becomes clear that there seem to be no limits to creativity in order to generate attention. To this end, the ambush marketing measures can largely be divided into the following categories:

  • Appearance as presenter
  • Sponsoring a sub-category
  • Concealment of communicative measures by sponsors
  • Simultaneous marketing campaign related to the event
  • Thematic advertising through the use of photos or film recordings of places or events that are highly memorable or with slogans that fit the event
  • Other creative actions that don't fit into the aforementioned categories.

The goals of ambush marketing are largely identical to those of sports sponsorship , but should be achieved with less financial means. They are derived from the company's marketing and communication goals and are therefore also referred to as derivative communication goals. With the use of sponsoring or ambush marketing, the overall effect of communication should be synergistically strengthened in order to achieve the existing goals of corporate communication. As in traditional marketing, a distinction is made between psychological or qualitative goals - such as image and customer satisfaction - and economic or quantitative goals such as profit and sales. So both should create a positive connection with a sports event in which

  • increasing awareness,
  • a transfer of positive image dimensions as well
  • a build up of goodwill

stand in the foreground.

practice

Examples

The sporting goods manufacturer Nike provided an impressive example of ambush marketing with the “Go Heinrich Go” campaign. Nike sponsored Heinrich, who is over 80 years old, when he took part in the Berlin Marathon . Nike equipped the runners and promoted the media staging, for example with Heinrich posters along the running route and their own "Heinrich newspaper" before the marathon. Nike benefited from the media attention for the oldest marathon participant and was able to achieve an effect comparable to that of the official marathon sponsor Adidas with less effort.

Classic ambush marketing-by-intrusion was the advertisement of a non-official sponsor company on a zeppelin that circled over the Nuremberg Frankenstadion at the 2005 Confederations Cup and was also shown on television.

A more subtle form of advertising was the contact lenses worn by British sprinter Linford Christies at the 1996 Summer Olympics , with which he presented the logo of his sponsor Puma at a press conference without Puma being an official sponsor of the Olympic Games.

Countermeasures

During the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, a telecommunications company in New Zealand ran ads referring to the Olympic rings . A New Zealand court, in which the company was sued for not sponsoring the Games, ruled that there was no relevant deception.

Against the background of such failures for the organizers and sponsors interested in protecting their marketing contracts, they tried to tighten their action against third-party brands: For example, 2000 Pepsi bottles were confiscated at the Olympic Games in Sydney as Coca-Cola's main sponsor was. When awarding their tournaments, the football associations UEFA and FIFA also asked the host countries to tighten legal regulations in order to be able to take effective action against ambush marketing:

Nigerian football fans wearing shirts from non-sponsor Globacom were allowed to enter the stadium for the Nigeria-Japan game of the 2010 Women's U-20 World Cup .

At the 2006 World Cup in Germany, FIFA insisted on an “advertising-free” (meaning free from third-party advertising) zone around the stadiums (popularly known as the “FIFA ban mile”). Up to 1,000 Dutch football fans who had come to a group game in lederhosen with a brewery logo printed on them were forced to take them off. “ [Y] ou cannot tell people to strip off their lederhosen and force them to watch a game in their underpants ” (“You can't just tell people to take off their lederhosen and watch a game in their underpants”), criticized the Bavaria brewery affected the FIFA measure which, in their opinion, went too far. At the soccer World Cup 2010 , Dutch fans were accused of ambush marketing even without a brewery logo, removed from the stadium and detained by the police. " [P] eople should have the right to wear whatever they want ", Bavaria repeated her point of view. “ There is no branding on the dresses. And Fifa don't have a monopoly over orange. ”(“ People should have the right to wear the clothes they want. There was no trademark on the clothes. And FIFA does not have a monopoly on orange. ”)

research

Problems and effects that ambush marketing brings with it have not yet been adequately researched. For example, both during and in the run-up to the 2006 FIFA World Cup, it was found that football-related advertising increased rapidly and viewers were over-saturated. Whether and how such oversaturation could be counteracted remains to be discussed.

The effects of ambush marketing are controversial even among communication professionals. Researchers at the Technical University of Chemnitz (Zanger / Drengner / Sachse) examined in numerous studies, e.g. B. the effects of ambush marketing during the 2004 European Football Championship, Olympic Games or World Cup. It turned out that only massive communication measures by official sponsors guaranteed that an official sponsor could break away from Ambushers. Conversely, particularly those Ambusher attracted attention who could use a close connection to the subject of football. As part of this research, from a behavioral point of view, the question of whether negative communication effects can be expected due to the growing flood of often similar communication measures by sponsors and ambushers in the context of major sporting events and the limited ability of the consumer to process information was also investigated. In various empirical studies on major sporting events (soccer World Cup, Olympic Games), Sachse was able to prove that not only the large number, but also the quality of the information rate flowing into the consumer from sponsors and Ambusher leads to consumer confusion regarding the correct perception of communication activities Companies and ultimately to the situational reactance of the consumer.

Legality issue

Criticism also refers to the negative connotation of the term "ambush marketing", "free rider" or "parasite marketing": Smaller companies often have no choice but to present themselves on the sidelines, since at larger events only companies with the most money can pay the high sponsorship money and be able to prevail against competitors. By using pejorative terms such as ambush marketing is both illegitimacy and a given only in very specific cases illegality indicated.

Ambush marketing is not a legally appropriate category. The organizers and the official sponsors try to “protect” themselves from ambush marketing with trademark, competition and house rights. The world football association FIFA has therefore had numerous trademarks protected: even for the depiction of the World Cup trophy, FIFA's approval is required. Laws have also been created in numerous countries to reduce ambush marketing activities in the interests of the organizers.

Criticism of countermeasures

Measures taken by FIFA against alleged ambush marketing at the 2006 World Cup were viewed critically and referred to as “ Korinthenkackerei ”: “In media centers, unpleasant logos are pasted over. Journalists with the wrong manufacturer's imprint on their laptop are threatened with having to hand over the writing instrument. Children who are in the wrong soccer jersey have to take off their camisole in order to be allowed into the stadium. ”At the soccer World Cup in South Africa in 2010 , a similar“ Beer Babes Affair ”occurred.

literature

  • Manfred Bruhn , Grit Mareike Ahlers: Ambush Marketing - Attack from Ambush or Intelligent Marketing? In: Yearbook of sales and consumer research. 3/2003, pp. 271-294.
  • Franz-Rudolf Esch , Kai Harald Krieger, Kristina Strödter: Breaking through the familiar through below-the-line communication. In: Manfred Bruhn, Franz-Rudolf Esch, Tobias Langner (Eds.): Handbook Communication: Basics, innovative approaches, practical implementation. Gabler, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-8349-0377-8 , pp. 85-106.
  • Holger Fehrmann: The protection of exclusive sponsorship rights at major sporting events against ambush marketing. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2010, ISBN 978-3-8329-4877-1 .
  • Rasmus Furth: Ambush Marketing: A Comparative Legal Study in the Light of German and US American Law. Heymanns, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-452-27190-7 .
  • Rasmus Furth: Ambush Marketing. In: Martin Stopper, Gregor Lentze (Hrsg.): Handbook Football Law - Rights Marketing Organization. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-503-13634-6 , pp. 267-309.
  • Katharina Hutter, Stefan Hoffmann: Guerrilla Marketing - a sober consideration of a much-discussed form of advertising. In: der markt - International Journal of Marketing. Vol. 50, No. 2, 2011, pp. 121-135.
  • Michael G. Noth: Free riding through advertising at sporting events. Legal assessment of ambush marketing and similar forms of advertising. Stämpfli, Bern 2007, ISBN 978-3-7272-1882-8 .
  • Gerd Nufer: Ambush Marketing in Sport. Basics - strategies - results. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-503-12629-3 .
  • Elias Resinger: Ambush Marketing at major sporting events. An analysis of the legal problem areas. VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken 2010, ISBN 978-3-639-28014-2 .
  • Manuela Sachse: Negative communication effects of sponsoring and ambush marketing at major sporting events. Gabler Verlag / Springer Fachmedien, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8349-2239-7 .
  • M. Sachse, J. Drengner: The Dark Side of Sponsoring and Ambushing Mega Sports Events: Is Successful Communication Hampered by Too Many, Too Similar, and Too Ambiguous Stimuli? In: C. Zanger (ed.): Status and perspectives of event research. Wiesbaden 2010, pp. 37-58.
  • M. Sachse, J. Drengner, S. Jahn: Negative Effects of Multiple Sponsoring and Ambushing of Mega Sports Events: The Case of FIFA Soccer World Cup 2006 and UEFA Euro 2008. In: H. Westerbeek, P. Fahlström (Ed.) : Best Practices in Sport Facility & Event Management, Proceedings of the 17th EASM European Sport Management Conference 2009, September 16-19, Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2009, pp. 236-238.
  • Christian Wollscheid: Guerrilla Marketing - Basics, Instruments and Examples. Grin Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-640-66095-7 .
  • Konrad Zerr: Guerrilla Marketing in Communication - Features, Mechanisms and Dangers. In: Uwe Kamenz (Ed.): Applied Marketing. Application-oriented marketing science from German universities of applied sciences. Springer, Berlin et al. 2003, ISBN 3-540-01252-4 , pp. 583-590.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Manuela Sachse: Negative communication effects of sponsoring and ambush marketing at major sporting events . Gabler Verlag / Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2010.
  2. ^ A b Gerd Nufer : Ambush Marketing in Sport. Basics - strategies - results . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2010.
  3. ↑ Katharina Hutter, Stefan Hoffmann: Guerilla Marketing - a sober consideration of a much discussed form of advertising. In: der markt - International Journal of Marketing. Vol. 50, No. 2, 2011, pp. 121-135.
  4. ↑ Konrad Zerr: Guerrilla Marketing in Communication - Features, Mechanisms and Dangers. In: Uwe Kamenz (Ed.): Applied Marketing. Application-oriented marketing science from German universities of applied sciences . Springer, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-540-01252-4 , pp. 583-590.
  5. ↑ a b c Accompanying report to the consultation draft amendment of the Federal Act against Unfair Competition (UWG) in connection with the implementation of the European Football Championship 2008. ( Memento of March 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Swiss Confederation. State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO. Bern, May 17, 2006 (PDF; 70 kB), p. 5.
  6. ↑ Accompanying report to the consultation draft, amendment of the Federal Law against Unfair Competition (UWG) in connection with the implementation of the European Football Championship 2008. ( Memento of March 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Swiss Confederation. State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO. Bern, May 17, 2006 (PDF; 70 kB), p. 3.
  7. ↑ a b Laura Smith-Spark: Dutch fans given shorts for match . In: BBC News. June 21, 2006, accessed June 15, 2010.
  8. ↑ a b World Cup 2010: FIFA detains 36 female Holland fans for 'ambush marketing' . In: Guardian.co.uk. June 15, 2010, accessed June 15, 2010.
  9. ↑ Marketing from an ambush: Chemnitz University of Technology examined "ambush marketing" at sporting mega-events . In: uni-protocol.de. August 20, 2004.
  10. ↑ Manuela Sachse: Negative communication effects of sponsoring and ambush marketing at major sporting events . Gabler Verlag / Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2010.
  11. ↑ M. Sachse, J. Drengner: The Dark Side of Sponsoring and Ambushing Mega Sports Events: Is Successful Communication Hampered by Too Many, Too Similar, and Too Ambiguous Stimuli? In: C. Zanger (ed.): Status and perspectives of event research. Wiesbaden 2010, pp. 37-58.
  12. ↑ M. Sachse, J. Drengner, S. Jahn: Negative Effects of Event Sponsoring and Ambushing: The Case of Consumer Confusion. In: MC Campbell, J. Inman, R. Pieters (Eds.): Advances in Consumer Research. Volume 37, MN Duluth: Association for Consumer Research. 2010, pp. 546-547.
  13. ↑ M. Sachse, J. Drengner, S. Jahn: Negative Effects of Multiple Sponsoring and Ambushing of Mega Sports Events: The Case of FIFA Soccer World Cup 2006 and UEFA Euro 2008. In: H. Westerbeek, P. Fahlström (eds. ): Best Practices in Sport Facility & Event Management, Proceedings of the 17th EASM European Sport Management Conference 2009, September 16-19, Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2009, pp. 236-238.
  14. ↑ M. Sachse, J. Drengner: The Dark Side of Sponsoring and Ambushing: Negative Consumer Responses to Stimuli Overload, Stimuli Similarity, and Stimuli Ambiguity, Proceedings of the 38th EMAC Conference 2009 (Advertising, promotion and marketing communication track), May 26 -29, Nantes, France, 2009.
  15. ↑ Markus Völker: Fifa is great at protecting the interests of its major sponsors. Blatter beeps . In: taz.de. June 17, 2010, accessed June 18, 2010.