BizChinaUpdate knows Ms Skildum-Reid well; she is an extremely skilled operator, a fine marketer and an excellent public speaker. In addition to being an early adopter of online blogging as a powerful sports marketing tool, she has also originated some of the best Olympic ambush marketing – and ambush defence – strategies in history.

“I wish ambush marketing didn’t happen,” Skildum-Reid says. “And it wouldn’t happen if sponsors really used the full marketing potential of their sponsorship investments. There simply wouldn’t be the opportunity. [But], ambush marketing is legal, so until sponsors wise up, it’s always going to be a factor.”

As such, Skildum-Reid posits, ambush marketing has been elevated from “an ethics-based sledging match to a strategic option for some companies, and defending against ambush an achievable, strategic process for all sponsors.”

Major events in developing sponsorship markets are particularly vulnerable, as some of the less sophisticated sponsors will fall prey to global brands with very sophisticated ambush strategies. "Ambush marketing will happen around Beijing 2008, there is no question about it,” Skildum-Reid says.

Most companies would have “no issue whatsoever” taking advantage of a competitor’s mistakes for their own gain, she adds. “A poorly leveraged sponsorship programme is a huge mistake, and if competitors take advantage, the sponsor can blame only themselves.”

Published by McGraw-Hill, The Ambush Marketing Toolkit (ISBN 9780070138087) comes with some of the best copy-written publicity we’ve received in a while – describing the book as: “Practical, controversial, and a little bit scary.” Just like ambush marketing itself. Beijing beware.
 

Last update : Saturday, 03 November 2007

Keywords : Ambush Marketing Toolkit, Kim Skildum-Reid, Olympics, Beijing

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