Is the USOC Ambushing Subway?
It was a comment from an unnamed “Olympic” source that first suggested that Subway, and its marketing partner Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, was employing ambush marketing to try to make it look like the restaurant chain was an Olympic sponsor, which it is not. At the same time last week, the U.S. Olympic Committee released a statement condemning ambush marketing and any company that appears to be participating in it. The unnamed source also mentioned Verizon as a culprit.
To the USOC, ambush marketing is not only seen as an attack on its deep-pocket sponsors, which it says it works tirelessly to protect from such unfortunate aggressions, but also an attack on the Olympic brand itself.
Phelps has been working with Subway since 2008, appearing in ads on and off since then. He is an Olympic athlete, one of the most recognizable in the world. So, whether he appears in a Subway ad tomorrow, or after the Winter Games, people will still see him as an Olympian, a face of the Olympics and the connection will be made.
Subway said in a statement it released because of the USOC accusation that it “does not share the USOC’s perspective and the conclusions being drawn from it.”
Subway is simply continuing to make good use of a smart marketing partnership it struck several years ago.
There are however, right now, untold numbers of marketers conducting ambush marketing around the Olympics and its sponsors, as well as finalizing and executing ones they plan to launch in Vancouver. Just look around, you’ll see them. Ambush marketing works.
In the case of the Olympics, as well as other major sporting events, the sponsor has typically set up shop at the event and the offender, usually a competitive brand, might deliberately lurk as close by as possible staging guerilla marketing or sampling or some other promotion to look like its part of the festivities. But the ambusher isn’t always on site. Take the Super Bowl. Brands have a way of crafting messages around “The Big Game” or “Game Day” to make it seem as if they are sponsors, when in fact they are not.
In a 2009 event marketing survey conducted by Promo, ambush marketing was employed by more than 21% of the companies surveyed, and more than 23% indicated they had been the victims of ambush marketing ploys.
The stakes for the USO, however, are enormous. Twelve Worldwide Olympic Partners, as the USOC calls its top corporate sponsors, generated $866 million during the 2005 to 2008 Olympic four-year period (Torino/Beijing). Over the same time period, the 108 sponsors in the domestic program, which grants marketing rights within the host country or territory only, generated $1.6 billion for the USOC.
And the USOC is losing ground. For the upcoming four-year term—2009 to 2012—there are only nine top partners, marketing giants Coca-Cola, Acer, Astos Origin, GE, McDonald’s Visa, Panasonic, Omega and Samsung.
So it seems understandable that the USOC might be casting a suspicious eye toward Subway, but if it takes a closer look it will probably find a few real culprits.
