Sponsors who don't leverage their investments fully and creatively are sitting ducks for ambush by non-sponsors who are prepared to be more creative, strategic, and relevant to the target market than they are. Got that? Leverage is a sponsor's best defence against ambush.
In 2008, however, we've got something amazing happening. Controversy and global backlash against the Olympics have effectively shrunk the leverage platform. We are seeing only very modest leverage activity in the marketplace - with many multinational sponsors completely inactive. Usually, with only three months to go before the Games, leverage programs would have been active for months and in full swing. Most seem to be waiting and hoping that once the Games are actually happening, the world will forget about the issues.
This huge gap in leverage activities should provide the perfect atmosphere for major and unimpeded ambush activity, but it's not happening. Even the most ubiquitous ambushers are staying away. Sponsors and ambushers alike are not seeing the Olympics for the marketing opportunity it once was.
The crazy part is that you can bet Bocog will be calling its anti-ambush activities a huge success. But the fact of the matter is that you can't effectively legislate against ambush, and if this were a desirable platform for ambush, there would be nothing it could do to stop it. Darfur, Tibet, and other issues sticking in the global consciousness are proving to be more of an ambush deterrent than any law ever could be.
The truly unfortunate thing for the sponsors is that they paid fees that gave them rights for years, and those fees were commensurate with the provision of years of opportunity. But the opportunity - the timeframe for leverage - has effectively shrunk to the point that these very expensive multinational sponsorships are destined to underperform. Assuming for the moment that people do leave the issues by the wayside while the games are on, even the most successful three-week leverage programme is only a three-week leverage programme.
The exception to all of this is Chinese ambushers. Within China, the level of condemnation of the various human rights issues - and certainly the openness about them - does not match the level seen around the rest of the world. This, coupled with the relative lack of sophistication (as compared to Olympic veteran sponsors) of Chinese Olympic sponsors, has created big opportunities for domestic ambush. The only saving grace is that Chinese ambushers also lack some of the strategic nous that their multinational counterparts bring to major ambush activities, so their impact may not be that great.
In the wash-up of the Beijing Olympics, as sponsors count up their wins and losses, I hope they, and the rest of us, also count up the lessons learned.
