Ambush Marketing: New Word in the Cricket Lexicon

Ambush Marketing is not a new phenomenon in the world of management. Ambush marketing, as per Wikipedia, means “a marketing strategy wherein the advertisers associate themselves with, and therefore capitalize on, a particular event without paying any sponsorship fee”. 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. In other words, it 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.

Currently, the Cricket World Cup being around the corner, talks on ICC’s laws concerning the ambush marketing have started. Four Indian players namely Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh and Asish Nehera have already have expressed their concerns to BCCI over the ICC clause after ICC has created a 100 strong committee to enforce the clause strictly during the World Cup.

ICC had sent a memo to the boards in the October last year which had sternly warned the players that violating this ambush marketing clause will lead to barring the player from participating in the tournament. The memo reads, “During the period of seven days prior to the first match and the departure date of the team, squad members may not allow their name, likeness or image to be used by any third party in any advertising or endorsement (or for any other commercial purpose) wearing team kit, team uniform or practice kit”. It simply means that during the specified time period no ads of companies rival to ICC sponsors can be aired that contain players playing the world cup. This step is to protect the interests of ICC’s own sponsors.

Cricket being followed like religion and cricketers being the biggest stars in India, the ones losing the most out of this clause are the Indian players. Indian cricketers sign deals of crores and that some of the deals may make susceptible to being the victim of the concerned rule. Now when players also have deals with IPL teams who may have sponsors who are rivals of ICC sponsors, the players will lose the money. If a player endorses Airtel, Coca-Cola, TVS or Samsung, then the ads featuring them can’t be aired during the world cup as Reliance, Pepsi, Hero Honda and LG are the brand sponsors for the ICC World Cup. However, cricketers can endorse other brands as long as they’re in any clothing other than their official team apparels. The ICC has allowed players to appear in an advertisement or an endorsement during the mega-event if they wear cricket whites or “any other casual formal or leisure wear”, provided they don’t appear in the national colours of their team and there is no direct association with the World Cup or usage of logos of the ICC or the tournament.

Ambush marketing is not totally new to cricket either. During the 1996 Cricket World Cup, Pepsi ran a series of advertisements titled “nothing official about it” targeting the official sponsor Coca Cola. Before the start of the 2003 Cricket World Cup; Indian team had threatened to pull out from the tournament compaining that the anti-ambush marketing rules were too strict. Of particular concern was the length of time before and after the cup that players were not allowed to endorse a rival to one of the official sponsors. In the 2005-06 Australian cricket season; Hardware brand Selleys ran advertisements during the cricket telecast with a fictional cricket called ‘Dave’. At the end of the commercial read a caption: “Selleys- Proud sponsor of the cricket”, despite not officially sponsoring the Australian cricket team or telecast. The company was forced to change their ads to avoid confusion. Even the New Zealand Sports minister has decided to bring laws to counter ICC’s anti-ambush marketing laws while hosting the 2015 cricket world cup.

The start of the world cup is just 13 days away. With the world cup being organized in India and with big Indian names coming under this rule, the coming days will be exciting from controversy point of view. We, as cricket fans, can only wish that the controversy doesn’t mar the quality of cricket expected from the event. At the end of the day, as Ravi Shastri famously says, Cricket should be the winner.