Marketing is organizing and implementing the creation, exchange, and satisfaction of personal and organizational goals through the pricing, promoting, and distributing of ideas, products, and services. Here, you will know ambush marketing and its advantages and disadvantages. Said marketing is determining what must be done to sell a product or service for a profit. Yet recently, multinational corporations worldwide have engaged in what many refer to as ambush marketing to increase their profits.
Meaning of Ambush Marketing
The phrase “ambush marketing” refers to an attack from a concealed position, and the word “ambush” is derived from the old French verb embuschier, which also means “to plant in a wood.” When managing the international marketing initiatives for the American Express Company in the 1980s, renowned marketing strategist Jerry Welsh created the term “ambush marketing.”
A marketing tactic known as “ambush marketing” entails the association of the marketers with an event to profit from it without having to pay a sponsorship fee. It is a type of marketing approach when a rival business collaborates with a significant sporting event without having to pay a sponsorship fee, according to the Macmillan English Dictionary.
Based on McCarthy, “Ambush marketing” is a strategy businesses use to entice consumers to pay attention to their adverts even when they are not the event’s official sponsors.
From a theoretical perspective, it refers to a company’s attempt to capitalize on a particular event’s goodwill, reputation, and popularity by creating an association with it without the authorization or consent of the necessary parties.
Top Advantages of Ambush Marketing
The advantages of ambush marketing are as follows:
- Through ambush marketing, companies can advertise their brand and make it known. During these important events it is a very effective way of making a brand known well, which could lead to more sales while spending less money on advertising the brand worldwide.
- In it, the prices go down when there is massive competition for nearly the same products. Consumers choose from well-known brands, and it could be a very effective way to gain more customers.
- Ambush marketing offers the advantage of a significant event to increase brand awareness while not spending the money to be a sponsor.
- Companies can adopt ambush marketing to encourage social media to cover their events and promote their products.
Disadvantages of Ambush Marketing
The disadvantages of ambush marketing are as follows:
1. Increasing Cost of Sponsorships
The increasing cost has also increased sponsors’ emphasis on return on investment. If sponsored events do not give exclusivity, the sponsor’s interest in sponsorship will be lost, and the damage will extend to the whole sponsorship market. Yet when that exclusivity is lost, the value of support is also lost. When a company engages in it, the exclusivity intended to be conferred through sponsorship to a sponsor is lost. Hence, the value of support is a loss.
2. Infringement on Intellectual Property Rights
Even if the ambush marketers don’t explicitly mention any protected intellectual property rights, they nonetheless infringe on such rights by trying to profit from an event’s hard-earned goodwill. Referring to the event emblem or the event itself directly or indirectly is still an illegal violation of the event organizers’ rights. Also, sponsors require assistance in receiving the expected return.
3. Other Disadvantages
- Decreases the commercial value of the event.
- It creates an unhealthy competitive environment.
- Adversely affect the event’s funding as it will benefit the company to be an ambusher instead of roping huge amounts of sponsorship.