It's all about craze, passion and zeal to excel that matters to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). A 15-company led opera promoted the footballing extravaganza that went on for a month in Germany. The planning took two years for the German government to wave its importance among an audience of 30 billion. Adidas, Budweiser, Avaya, Coca-Cola, Continental, Deutch Telecom, Emirates, Fujifilm, Gillette, Hyundai, MasterCard, McDonald's, Philips, Toshiba and Yahoo! paid a huge sum of ¤642 mn to the host country. Such a huge amount, just to get better exposure for an event that comes once in four years. However, there is a lot of criticism raised against FIFA for its polarization and control over the passion of football. It is not only controlling but also cashing in on the passion of the youth for football. Further, it has also been accused of churning up a big figure revenue during the World Cup. The FIFA 2006 organizing committee put restrictions on the viewers who happened to wear or carry the logos of well-known brands on their attire; the contention towards it was that they wanted to curb "Ambush Marketing" that was being played by an identified marketer.
Jerry Welch was the first individual who introduced the term "Ambush Marketing" to the world. It can be defined as "When a company signs a sponsorship contract for an event and its near rival hijacks the mind of its customers through usage of various media and creates a strong association with the event despite not being the official sponsor". However, with the passage of time, people and practitioners in their own way interpreted the term. Thus, anyone (identified player) who tries to hijack the mind of the customers without paying the official sum for the opera and make the customers obsess with it, is called Ambush Marketer. |
