This post is open up for discussion on ambush marketing in the e-business environment. But a bit of introduction on ambush marketing may help to kick start the discussion.
Ambush Marketing
Despite fairness concerns, ambush marketing exists and it’s not more legal or illegal than other forms of marketing. Ambush marketing strategy has not only been used by market followers, it has also been used by market leaders to maximize the effectiveness of their marketing dollars.
Ambush marketing is not just for the amateurs, it’s also adopted by professional marketers. Even some market leaders have crafted million dollar marketing campaigns based purely on ambush marketing strategy or combining it with other marketing activities.
To find out how ambush marketing works, you need to look no further than the Olympic Games, which is known as a field day among elite ambush marketing specialists. Olympic ambush marketing has become such a phenomenon that many companies think it is really not worthwhile to become official sponsors of the games. Why pay millions of dollars when you can achieve very similar result at a fraction of the costs?
This has apparently raised serious concerns for the organiser of the games. They have to think serious on what they can do to deliver substantial benefits to sponsors.
Ambush marketing is also an attractive field for elite marketers as it’s a highly creative area of marketing. The problem for those who dislike ambush marketing is that, the phenomenon would always exist. It’s also increasingly creative and upgraded at a pace faster than traditional marketing.
So is it the end of the world for traditional marketing?
This reminded me the panicking state the world was in when Microsoft first offered Internet Explorer for free by bundling it with the windows system. A lot of people think, oh no, Internet Explorer is going to kill our beloved Netscape Navigator and the internet will be taken over by Microsoft. Instead of thinking the positive side of it, hatred was developed against Microsoft and anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft dominated the media.
What actually happen is unexpected. Microsoft continue to offer Internet Explorer for free and people started to like the idea. And yes, Netscape Navigator died, but it didn’t take too long for it to be born again. It has never been better looking, million times more powerful and unstoppable as it’s being continuously developed by not one person, one company, not even a group of companies, but by millions of keen contributors around the world as a open source software. Its functionality has gone far beyond what a browser was originally intended for. You can check multiple email accounts in one go within the browser, get your life or work organised, listen to music, download things you can do with normal browsers, conduct research like a professor with a loyal and efficient assistant, talking to people reading the same page from other parts of the world, know what your friends are doing without entering Facebook, bid much better on ebay and develop your own website easily etc. It even has a new catchy name – Firefox.
A lesson to learn here is that Ambush marketing is not the end of the world for traditional marketing. It would make marketing even more interesting. It’s time to look at ambush marketing as one of the mix in your overall marketing strategy. It would be more rewarding to work with it rather than working blindly against it.
For event organisers, it would be more productive to think about building a frame work to coordinate ambush marketing just like developing strategies to secure sponsorship. The objective is to lead at least part of or even the entire ambush marketing movement from the wildness into activities that can be beneficial to the organisers and even the official sponsors.
So what’s the key element that marketers can leverage to achieve the desired positive result? Choice, an attraction that consumers can not resist. And the clear differentiation between sponsor company’s offers and ambush marketing company’s offers. More often then not, ambush marketing does help to bring attention to the events. If guided appropriately, it can act as a self funded publicity campaign for the event concerned.
I am not suggesting this lightly. I have been researching and studying the pros and cons of ambush marketing for years while many other marketers simply resent it or being shy to talk about it.
So what’s the distinctive characteristics of e-ambush marketing?
For one, it’s even more unavoidable due to the convenience made available by the electronic media and the flatter structure of social networks that bring power to individuals and smaller organisations. So it’s not a choice to avoid or just resent it.
