DEFINITION

Ambush marketing can be defined as a marketing strategy wherein the advertisers associate themselves with, and therefore
capitalize on, a particular event without paying any sponsorship fee.[1] The Macmillan English Dictionary defines ambush marketing
as a marketing strategy in which a competing brand connects itself with a major sporting event without paying sponsorship fee.
[2]
According to McCarthy, ambush marketing is a type of marketing by a company that is not an official sponsor of an event, but
which places advertisements using the event, to induce customers to pay attention to the advertisement.[3] From a theoretical
perspective, ambush marketing refers to a company's attempt to capitalize on the goodwill, reputation, and popularity of a particular
event by creating an association with it, without the authorization or consent of the necessary parties.

TYPES OF AMBUSH MARKETING

Direct" ambush marketing

 "Predatory" ambushing: Intentional false claims to official sponsorship by a non-sponsor and/or intentional false denial

by a non-sponsor concerning a market competitor's official sponsorship, in each case with the intent to confuse consumers and

gain market share from the competing official sponsor.

 "Coattail" ambushing: The attempt by a brand to directly associate itself with a property or event by "playing up" a

connection to the property/event that is legitimate but does not involve financial sponsorship.

 Ambushing via trademark/likeness infringement: The intentional unauthorized use of protected intellectual property.

Such properties can include the logos of teams or events, or making use of unauthorized references to tournaments, teams or

athletes, words and symbols.

 Ambushing "by degree": Marketing activities by an official sponsor above and beyond what has been agreed on in the

sponsorship contract. For example, an "ambush by degree" of a sports event may involve a sponsor's handing out free

promotional T-shirts without the permission of the sports league supervising the event. That sponsor may have already

covered the stadium with its signs, or the sports league or participating teams may have made an earlier agreement – perhaps

even an exclusive one – to let a different sponsor hand out shirts. In either case, ambush by degree clutters the available

marketing space; takes advantage of the participating teams and supervising league to a greater extent than they permitted;

and dilutes the brand exposure of official sponsors, including the other promotional efforts of the ambushing company (hence

the alternative term "self-ambushing").

[edit]"Indirect" ambush marketing

 Ambushing "by association": The use of imagery or terminology not protected by intellectual-property laws to create an

illusion that an organization has links to a sporting event or property — This form differs from direct "coattail" ambushing in that

there exists no legitimate connection between the event/property and from direct ambush by infringement in that the sponsored

event/property has no property rights in the images and/or words that create the illusion.
  Values-based ambushing: Tailoring by a non-sponsor of its marketing practices to appeal to the same values or involve

the same themes as do the event and/or its promotion, such that audiences attracted to the event or its marketing will likewise

be attracted to the non-sponsor's marketing — Essentially a reversal from "push" to "pull" of the causal processes through

which direct "coattail ambushers" create sponsor/event-unapproved mental association with their products, this form of

ambushing differs from "ambushing by association" in that the ambushing business begins by observing the event's

promotional scheme and drawing inferences as to its existing thematic content, as opposed to observing the event's audience

and creating new thematic content in hopes that consumers will associate the event with the thematic content created.

 Ambushing "by distraction": Setting up a promotional presence at or near an event, albeit without making specific

reference to the event itself, its imagery, or its themes, in order to take advantage of the general public's attention toward the

event and the audience members' awareness of their surroundings — This form of ambush amounts to "free riding" upon

the positive externalitythat the event creates for the surrounding area by "anchoring" public and individual attention there; see

also "Saturation ambushing" under "Incidental" ambush marketing.

 "Insurgent" ambushing: The use of surprise street-style promotions (blitz marketing) at an event or near

enough to it that the ambushing business can identify and target audience members — The "active" version of "passive"

ambushing by distraction, insurgent ambushing not only takes advantage of positive externalities but creates negative

externalities by intruding upon attendees' experiences of the event and detracting from those experiences' quality (cf. the

distinction in biology between commensalism and parasitism).

 "Parallel property" ambushing: The creation or sponsorship of an event or property that bears qualitative

similarity to the ambush target and competes with it for the public's attention — An application of "ambushing by

distraction" in which the ambusher-marketed product is the event/property itself, parallel-property ambushing does not

intrude upon the experience of audience members (who remain free to attend whichever event or patronize whichever

property they deem more attractive), but it does divert audience dollars and attendance figures from the preexisting

event/property, interfering with the efforts of that event's/property's financial backers to recover their

largely fixed production costs.

IMPACTS OF AMBUSH MARKETING

ncreasing cost of sponsorships: The increasing cost of sponsorships has also increased sponsor's emphasis on return-on-

investment. If sponsored events do not give exclusivity, the sponsor's interest on sponsorship property will be lost and the damage

will extend to the whole sponsorship market. Yet when that exclusivity is lost, the value of sponsorship is also lost. When a company

engages in ambush marketing the exclusivity intended to be conferred through sponsorship to a sponsor is lost. Hence, the value of

sponsorship is also lost. As it is an undeniable fact that corporate sponsorship is one of the biggest money-spinning sources of

revenue for the event organizers, the loss in sponsorship value will affect the financial strength of an event organizer.
Transgression on the intellectual property rights: Even when the ambush marketers are not making any direct references to the

protected intellectual property rights, they in effect transgress those intellectual property rights by attempting to capitalize on such

hard earned goodwill from an event. Direct and indirect references to the event symbol or the event itself are just different means for

achieving illegal transgression on the rights of event organizers. Moreover, sponsors cannot get the return they anticipated.

GROWTH IN INDIA
The term “ambush” is used to connote the older method of warfare in the present era of commercialization, competition and
advertisement.
Ambush marketing is usually employed at the times of big sporting events, where big corporations’ cash is on the names of the
sporting events without paying the requisite fee, which constitutes the crux of “direct ambush advertising”. However, it is not sporting
events only which become the mode of deploying ambush marketing. Of late, India has witnessed a spurt in the cases of ambush
marketing even without any association with the sporting events.
The objectives of ambush marketing are twofold:

1. To get maximum returns on the marketing buck and

2. To undermine the branding efforts of the rivals by stealing the attention, increasing the clutter and confusing the viewers.
Ambush marketing was first witnessed in 1984 Olympics and the 1996 Cricket World Cup which highlighted the concept in India.
During the 1996 World Cup, although Coca Cola was the official sponsor of the tournament, Pepsi ambushed the campaign by
coming up with the tagline “nothing official about it”.
India as a nation thrives on cricket as its staple sport. To tackle the issue of direct ambush marketing in cricket tournaments, the ICC
and BCCI came up with an agreement for the players in the year 2003, whereby the players were prohibited from appearing in
advertisements for companies which were competitors for the sponsoring company. However, the contract just became the focus of
a controversy and did not see the light of the day.
In recent times, the nation has been a witness to hoarding ambush advertisements. Jet Airways came up with an ad campaign
saying “We’ve changed”! To ambush the campaign, Kingfisher airlines came up with “We’ve made them change” which was further
ambushed by Go Airways saying “We’ve not changed. We are still the smartest way to fly”. The hoardings in this case, were placed
in the city of Mumbai in a vertical sequence. The campaigns proved to be a funny sight to the city but a slap in the face of
competitors as each competitor was feeding into the campaign of the other.
However, the latest war was between Hindustan Unilever’s shampoo brand “Dove” and Procter & Gamble’s shampoo brand
“Pantene”. P&G launched its intriguing ad campaign for Pantene with the tagline “A mystery shampoo. Eighty percent women say it
is better than anything else.” A few days later and before P&G could launch the new Pantene, Hindustan Unilever ambushed the
campaign by placing an adjacent hoarding with the tagline “There is no mystery. Dove is the No. 1 shampoo.”, thus ambushing
Pantene’s campaign.
In the examples described above, the ambushed company cannot avail of any specific legal remedy. The advertising campaign can
only be considered an unfair trade practice, the remedy for enforcement of which is not very clear.
Ambush advertising can be trapped in the legal web by legislations like The Trade Mark Act, 1999 or The Copyright Act, 1957 when
it is direct. However, the two examples described above, use the indirect ambush which cannot be trapped under any specific
legislation and it leaves the underdog brand in a tight spot. Thus, the need of the present hour is for the Indian government to
provide for some specific legislation which lay down a prescribed behavior for advertisements.
In the 2003 case of ICC vs. Arvee Enterprises and Philips, the Delhi High Court, while recognizing the alleged act as ambush
marketing categorically stated that such acts were not in fact prohibited under current Indian law.
Ambush advertisements are an enticing and thrilling mode of advertising. Although ambush advertisement mars the campaign of the
first brand, it ends up giving a lot of publicity to both the brands. The campaign sells like hot cakes amongst the media and captures
the mindscape of the consumer in seconds. The ethical concerns over ambush marketing are a controversy in itself. Ambush
marketing is just an aggressive behavior observed in the commercial arena but it definitely does not revolve around fair practices.
Thus, there is a need to draw a line and where it should be drawn has to be decided by a prescribed mode of legislation.