 If ever there were an indication of the desirability of a sponsorship property, it is the amount of ambush marketing going on around it. Usually, the Olympics leads the pack in ambush (although the IOC is loathe to admit it), cementing its position as the single most important sponsorship property worldwide.
Sponsors who don’t leverage their investments fully and creatively are
sitting ducks for ambush by non-sponsors, who are prepared to be more
creative, strategic, and relevant to the target market than they are.
In 2008, however, we’ve got something amazing happening. Controversy
and global backlash against the Olympics have effectively shrunk the
leverage platform. We are seeing only very modest leverage activity in
the marketplace – with many multinational sponsors completely inactive.
Usually, with only three months to go before the Games, leverage
programmes would have been active for months and in full swing. Most
seem to be waiting and hoping that once the Games are actually
happening, the world will forget about the issues.
This huge gap in leverage activities should provide the perfect
atmosphere for major and unimpeded ambush activity, but it’s not
happening. Even the most ubiquitous ambushers are staying away.
Sponsors and ambushers alike are not seeing the Olympics for the
marketing opportunity it once was.
The crazy part is that you can bet BOCOG will be calling their
anti-ambush activities a huge success. But the fact of the matter is
that you can’t effectively legislate against ambush, and if this were a
desirable platform for ambush, there would be nothing they could do to
stop it. Darfur, Tibet, and other issues sticking in the global
consciousness are proving to be more of an ambush deterrent than any
law ever could be.
The truly unfortunate thing for the sponsors is that they paid fees
that gave them rights for years, and those fees were commensurate with
the provision of years of opportunity. But the opportunity – the
timeframe for leverage – has effectively shrunk to the point that these
very expensive multinational sponsorships are destined to underperform.
Assuming for the moment that people do leave the issues by the wayside
while the Games are on, even the most successful three-week leverage
programme is only a three-week leverage programme.
The exception to all of this is Chinese ambushers. Within China, the
level of condemnation of the various human rights issues – and
certainly the openness about them – does not match the level seen
around the rest of the world. This, coupled with the relative lack of
sophistication (as compared to Olympic veteran sponsors) of Chinese
Olympic sponsors and their leverage programs, has created big
opportunities for domestic ambush. The only saving grace is that
Chinese ambushers also lack some of the strategic nous that their
multinational counterparts bring to major ambush activities, so their
impact may not be that great.
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. Kim’s Olympic sports marketing blog is available here.
Last update : Friday, 16 May 2008
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