It's Official!

The Winter Olympics are just days away, and I couldn’t be more excited. Two weeks of fierce rivalries and gruelling competition!

And that’s just the battle for sponsorship supremacy!

Event sponsorship is a powerful marketing tool at any level, but few events eclipse the Olympic Games for global exposure and overuse of spandex. This explains why the Olympics is one of the prime targets of Ambush Marketers.

Ambush marketing is not about hiding in the bushes, jumping out to sell shoes to startled, unsuspecting customers, though that does sound like fun. Ambush marketing is about gaining brand exposure on someone else’s dime.

It’s a tactic many marketers use to unofficially ‘attach’ to a major event without having to foot the bill.

Think of it this way. You hold a big party to announce your engagement. You pay for the catering and the decorations, only to have the limelight stolen by a guest who beats you to the punch by announcing they’re pregnant!

That’s ambush marketing, made even more dramatic if the guest happens to be six foot three, has a beard and is named Frank.

Take the 1984 Olympic Games, where Kodak sponsored all television coverage while its competition, Fuji was the official Games sponsor. Despite both company’s efforts however, neither scored well in long jump.

Unapologetically, Nike is the ultimate ambush marketer. Nike refrains from sponsoring events, choosing instead to sponsor teams and individuals. The company’s sponsorship of the 2002 US Olympic hockey team earned as much exposure as any official sponsor without Nike ever having to pay the Olympic Organizing Committee a penny.

And Ambush marketing isn’t proprietary to brand giants.

To become the official sponsor of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Anheuser-Busch paid more than $50 million. In return they received exclusive rights to use the word ‘Olympic’ in their advertising.

Schirf Brewery, the small, local brewer of Wasutch Beer, ingeniously worked around copyright regulations. The company marked its trucks with “Wasutch Beers. The Official Beer. 2002 Winter Games.” By avoiding using the word ‘Olympic’, they connected to the games without having to purchase official status as a sponsor.

Is there anything wrong with ambush marketing? Technically, no. But considering the top nine global Olympic sponsors paid $900 million for sponsorship rights, it’s understandable why some companies frown on being punked by ambush marketers.

If conventional marketing is like beating the competition over the head with a stick, ambush marketing is like beating the competition over the head with their own stick, while they’re not looking...

So, come February 12th, as you watch a grown man in spandex race down an icy track passing by a succession of blurred official Coca Cola banners, keep your eyes open for the big unofficial Pepsi logo tacked to the side of his helmet, always in focus and always on the screen.

Take it from me, the unofficial marketing columnist of the 2010 Winter Games, ambush marketing may not be ‘the real thing’, but it works.