BIZ TALK CEO INTERVIEW:

Kim Skildum-Reid, Founder, Power Sponsorship

Kim Skildum-Reid is a worldwide authority on best-practice sponsorship and ambush marketing, and author of several sponsorship books, including The Ambush Marketing Toolkit. Based in Sydney, she trains, coaches, and consults to some of the world’s biggest sponsors. 

What are the current hot issues for sponsors and rights holders in Asia, and globally?

KS-R: Without doubt, the three biggest issues for major events and major sponsors are getting leverage right, measuring results, and ambush marketing. This applies globally, but is an even more critical issue in Asia, where some sponsors are making major financial commitments without a lot of experience or sophistication behind their leverage and measurement plans.

These three areas are highly interrelated. If you don’t have a sophisticated, effective measurement plan in place, you won’t leverage well, as companies tend to leverage to the measurement mechanisms. If they are measuring logo exposure – very outdated – they will be overly concerned with where and how big their logos are, and will miss the more meaningful leverage opportunities.

If you don’t have a meaningful, best-practice leverage plan, you are also a sitting duck for ambush marketing. Your best defence is a great offence. Making your sponsorship meaningful to your target market, and making the sponsorship benefit that target market, is the number one hallmark of an ambush-proofed sponsorship.

Many commentators expect Beijing 2008 to be an ambush marketing fiesta. Do you agree, and how can sponsors and marketing companies best prepare themselves?

KS-R: I absolutely agree. The Olympics are always a showcase for truly strategic ambushes, and there are a few additional factors that make Beijing even more attractive to ambushers:

The rapid ascent of the Asian sponsorship marketplace has meant that many companies – particularly Asian companies – are spending a lot of money on major deals without a lot of experience or sophistication behind them. Best practice sponsorship and ambush both operate at the highly sophisticated, consumer-driven fourth generation of sponsorship. Even companies that are one generation behind, objective-driven, will fall prey to a best-practice ambusher. And many Asian sponsors are operating much closer to first generation (exposure-driven) and second generation (sales-driven).

The cost of IOC and BOCOG sponsorships has made being an official partner financially out-of-reach for all but a handful of the biggest sponsors in the region and the world. For companies that want to be involved, but simply can’t afford the entry fees, ambush is a viable option.

The size of the market and booming economy make “cracking China” extremely appealing to shrewd multinationals. If they’re not officially involved, there are myriad ways that a motivated brand can take advantage.

The litany of levels of sponsorship – IOC, BOCOG, National Olympic bodies, individual sports, and individual athletes – mean that a company could legitimately sponsor a sport or individual and leverage it so hard and so creatively that they look like they are partners at a much higher level. This is called “ambushing up” and is the one type of ambush that I nearly always recommend.

You wrote recently that ambush marketing has "been elevated from an ethics-based sledging match to a strategic option for some companies." How have ambush marketing techniques evolved in recent years?

KS-R: As sponsorship has advanced to win-win-win – the sponsor wins, the property wins, and the target market wins – ambush marketing has advanced along the same lines. Ambush used to be all about “getting the brand out there,” but has advanced to the point where great ambushers try to find ways to enhance and add value to the event experience for their target markets, giving them a “win”.

Keep in mind that an event experience doesn’t just happen when a person is sitting in a stadium. As long as a person is interested in an event – before, during, and after, and possibly for months or more – they are having an event experience. There are a lot of ways to add value to that experience that have nothing to do with anything the event controls.

Which requires the more sophisticated planning and execution: offensive or defensive ambush marketing, and why?

KS-R: If they want to get a great return, they both require the same amount of sophistication, time, and effort. The only major difference is that sponsors have to spend a significant amount of time managing their relationship with the partner, while ambushers have to spend a significant amount of time and effort creating meaningful benefits without the benefit of a sponsorship. In terms of who has most to lose if they don’t put in the effort – that would definitely be the sponsors.

How do you respond to comments that ambush marketing is immoral and should be outlawed?

KS-R: Get over it. There is no way to outlaw it. Ambushers don’t need anything that a law can control in order to mount a very successful ambush. Industry media and associations have tried for years to shame ambushers into stopping the practice, and it simply hasn’t worked. Ambushers get better and more prolific all the time.

Whether you, personally, think it is immoral or not – whether you would do it or not – that won’t stop other companies from doing it. And consumers don’t care. As outraged at the practice as you might be, it probably hasn’t stopped you having an Amex or Visa card, flying Qantas, drinking Coke or Pepsi, or wearing Nike gear. It hasn’t stopped you from using the brands of ambushers – and it won’t stop your target markets, either.

We need to face facts. This is a strategic decision that some companies are prepared to make, and as long as sponsors don’t leverage their investments well, there will be ample room for ambush. If you’re ambushed, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you want to protect yourself, no one is going to do it for you. You have to protect yourself.

In a perfect world, there would be no ambush marketing, because all sponsors would select and leverage their sponsorships so they are win-win-win. Until that happens, ambush is a part of this industry.

 

Last update : Thursday, 13 December 2007

Keywords : Ambush, Marketing, Biz Talk, CEO, Interview, Kim Skildum-Reid

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