Ambush Marketing

Ambush Marketing
by Professor Jeremy Phillips

At this year's Olympic Games in Sydney, the world marvelled at the feats of highly-skilled sportsmen and athletes as they competed for fame and honour. Spectators and TV viewers may not however have noticed an Olympian struggle of another kind, a battle fought out at the highest stakes.

It is not just sportsmen for whom the Olympic Games provides a golden opportunity. With the demise of amateur athletics and the increased commercialisation of sports, businesses rush to become involved in a piece of action. Use of the word "Olympic" is protected by an international treaty, the Nairobi Convention, which enables the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its national counterparts to license the exclusive use of that word and the famous Five Rings symbol. The right to be the Games' official airline, credit card, soft drink or timekeeper provides such valuable publicity that companies bid against each other to secure it. Many millions of dollars may be earned by the Olympic movement in this way.

But what happens to companies who cannot afford to make a bid for official recognition? They too seek to cash in on the popularity of the Games. Even though they cannot describe themselves as official sponsors, they can still portray their goods and services in a manner that suggests some connection with the Olympics. Some businesses feature athletes or other competitors in their advertising, in some cases having already contractually obliged a sports personality to wear or use their products. Other businesses promote what they call "Olympian" special offers. Still other companies seek to buy up large quantities of billboard space in the city in which the Games are held, in the hope that the very high profile of their brands in the immediate vicinity of the event will encourage the public to identify them as somehow being involved in it.

These practices, all of which seek to divert the public's attention from the identity of an official sponsor, are collectively termed "ambush marketing" because they are a ploy to hijack the advantage which the official sponsor expects to derive from its arrangement with the IOC. Most of these practices are legal. Indeed, the principles of competition in an open market seem almost to invite companies which have been "shut out" from the Olympics to use their ingenuity to regain the public's attention.

If there is any actual deception, or an unauthorised use of the Olympic word and symbol trade marks, the law provides a direct means for the official sponsor or the IOC to intervene. But where there is no deception or actual wrongdoing, we should still ask whether such conduct is strictly ethical. This is not an easy issue to determine. No business can afford to curl up and die just because a competitor has secured a temporary monopoly of the world's attention and ambush marketing can itself be described as a positive response to a competitor's dominance. Yet each ambush does rather smack of "sour grapes" and may suggest a degree of corporate vindictiveness.