Defending the Co-Branding Benefits of Sponsorship B2B Partnerships: The Case of Ambush Marketing

As THE 2006 WINTER OLYMPICS fast approach, and as athletes work to attain their scientifically scheduled peak physical form, corporate sponsors are gearing up for a different battle. Having invested in the Games and tied their brand strategy to the Olympic theme, they must now guard jealously this positioning in the face of "ambushers"— direct competitors striving to catch an illicit ride on the Olympic wave by deceiving or confusing consumers into believing they too are official sponsors. Long regarded as merely one among a battery of available marketing communication tools, sponsorship is now a powerful vehicle used by major organizations the world over to build brand value. In the process, it has become the foundation of dynamic business-to-business (B2B) relationships built on the premise that the brand of the sponsor and that of the sport or event it is associated with can be both successfully and synergistically enhanced over time (Stipp and Schiavone, 1996). In short, sponsorship has become a strategic vehicle for co-branding partnerships (Cliffe and Motion, 2005) with evidence of great success: Adidas' strengthened association with World Cup soccer has been widely credited with significantly contributing to the brand's market share increases. from 2 percent to 5 percent, in just four years (Keller, 1999). However, while strategic partnerships are increasingly important tools of competitive strategies, they also present significant challenges, with research suggesting failure rates of close to 50 percent (Inkpen and Ross, 2001). For instance, despite the obvious advantages of sponsorship as a co-branding partnership, including the ability to set up exclusive agreements that are rare or impossible in other contexts, sponsorship suffers specific threats, not least as a result of efforts by ambush marketers. That sports marketing is now one of the biggest business games in town is not under dispute. Recent figures demonstrate the growth and significance of sponsorship budgets around the world. For example. Table 1 shows the price tags of various sports sponsorship agreements. Given the magnitude of these expenditures, that little exists in the way of guidance about how to secure and protect sponsorship value is perplexing. Moreover, given the strategic significance of the longterm co-branding efforts undertaken by both sponsors and sport or event properties, it is somewhat surprising that so little analysis has examined the impact of ambush marketing nor elaborated possible responses to such a threat.