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ambush marketing business definition
A promotion tactic designed to associate a company, product, or service with a particular event, or to attract the attention of people attending the event, without payment being made for an official sponsorship. For example, a business affiliates itself with a particular athlete or sports team rather than paying to become an official Olympics sponsor. Successful ambush marketing diminishes the value of an official sponsorship. Also called parasitic marketing.
Case Study There is no better place to spring an ambush marketing campaign than at the world's biggest sporting event. While the Super Bowl is the premiere sporting event in the United States, the World Cup sits at the pinnacle and attracts three times the television viewers of the annual U.S. football championship. Even U.S.-based companies such as Coca-Cola, Gillette, and Anheuser Busch each paid nearly $50 million to become one of the 15 official sponsors of the 2006 World Cup. Athletic clothing supplier Adidas has been a long-time official sponsor of World Cups, including the 2006 matches held in Germany. Adidas was also the official sponsor of several teams, including powerful Argentina. To the anguish of Adidas, competitor Nike always seems to develop a successful ambush-marketing campaign at world-class sporting events such as the Olympics and World Cup. Prior to the 2006 World Cup, Nike launched a social networking website for the world's soccer fans as part of its “Joga Bonito" (a beautiful game) marketing campaign. The company claimed that widespread interest in its website, along with sponsorship of the Brazilian soccer team, successfully competed with the higher costs of the official sponsorship by Adidas.