The Olympics have been ambushed!

Not many people will have missed the news about Nicklas Bendner flashing a pair of Paddy Power pants after scoring a goal for Denmark recently. The kind souls at Paddy Power agreed to pay the £80,000 fine that the striker was handed for his stunt, but in actual fact the bookmakers got the last laugh. With all the publicity they gained for the lucky pants, they are predicted to make that £80,000 back 100 times over. Not bad for a pair of sweaty boxers...

Most people realise that Paddy Power knew they were breaking the rules and knew they would benefit from the publicity. In the Marketing world, we call this Ambush Marketing. According to Google, this is where a brand or company creates a marketing campaign around an event without paying sponsorship fees. This is essentially the reason LOCOG have featured in the news recently, as brands are now not allowed to mention the Olympics, or certain words (such as Gold, Silver, Bronze) in their marketing and this will last until the end of the games. This is in order to protect the rights (and the bank balances) of important sponsors such as McDonalds, BT and Visa who collectively, amongst overs, invest billions of pounds into the games.

The most creative piece of ambush marketing I have seen so far has been released today by Oddbins. They are offering discounts to anybody who wears Nike trainers, buys a Pepsi at KFC, owns an iPhone and drives a Vauxhall! The reason for this is that they are all rival brands to the Olympic sponsors. They also have promotional posters stating that they "can't mention the event, cant mention the city and can't even mention the year". This is of course with obvious reference to the Games, but without breaking any of the rules. Another arguable piece of Ambush Marketing is Subway's recent Athletics-based adverts, where they state their 'personal best', which is in fact their favourite Subway sandwich.

Ambush Marketing is something that splits the industry but not many people can deny the creativity of it. Another examples of it include American Express stating that "you don't need a visa to visit Spain" during the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games, an obvious attack on a rival card provider. Another favourite mine is Selley's, an Australian Brand, who were forced to remove ads which stated that they were proud sponsors of "the cricket", despite not being an official sponsor of the league or any teams. They were in actual fact referring to an insect called Dave, but the authorities wouldn't allow this!

Not all brands are so intrusive. For example, Fujifilm sponsored television broadcasts of the Olympic games in 1988 whereas Kodak were the official sponsors, and Nike sponsored a number of 1998 Fifa world cup teams despite Umbro being the Official Sponsors of the tournament.

Ambush Marketing is a grey area legally as there are so many ways to associate yourselves with an event without breaking the rules. The example from Oddbins is the first of many we will see over the summer, and the benefit for us consumers is that we get to see some pretty creative advertising. I think most guys are hoping that Bavaria play their part like they did in the 2010 world cup...

Unsurprisingly, Bavaria sold a lot more beer after this publicity stunt...

No matter what rules are in place, the most creative and best Ambush Marketers will always win. Rules were made to be broken, and many companies are proving it might even be worth it too!

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Look out for my next Marketing blog soon!