Sponsorship, ambushing, and counter-strategy: Effects upon memory for sponsor and event.

Abstract

Corporate sponsorship of sports, causes, and the arts has become a mainstream communications tool worldwide. The unique marketing opportunities associated with major events also attract nonsponsoring companies seeking to form associations with the event (ambushing). There are strategies available to brands and events which have been ambushed; however, there is only limited information about the effects of those strategies on attainment of sponsorship objectives. In Experiment 1, university staff and students participated by studying paragraphs linking a sponsor to a novel event. Relative to each sponsor-event pair, they then studied one of three different messages about a competitor. Results find a message which linked the competitor and the event increased competitor recall given the event as a cue and event recall given the competitor as a cue. These effects were moderated if there was information about the competitor not being the sponsor. In Experiment 2 ambushing and counter-ambushing information was presented over 2 days. Both types of messages increased competitor recall given the event as a cue and event recall given the competitor as a cue. In addition, "not sponsor" information was not always used even when it should have been recallable. The results can be explained if participants are using three cues: a specific cue such as a brand name, a contextual cue, and a category cue, such as the concept of an event. Findings suggest to sponsoring firms and event properties that counter-ambushing communications may have the unintended effect of strengthening an ambusher-event relationship in memory.

What Drives Ambush Marketer Misidentification?

“…This is in line with many sponsorship experiments that use fictitious press releases to inform respondents about fictitious sponsorship deals (e.g., Carrillat, Harris, & Lafferty, 2010;Johar & Pham, 1999). Researchers have also recently adopted this procedure in ambush market ing studies (Humphreys et al, 2010). Before the main study.…”

“…To determine sponsor identification and ambush marketer misidentification, sponsorship studies have applied aided recall (of the official sponsor) (e.g., Humphreys et al, 2010;Wakefield et ah, 2007). Aided recall of the official sponsor, with the event as cue, served as the dependent variable in this study.…”

Memory Effects of Different Relational Links between Brands and Sponsored Events

“…Humphreys et al. () conduct an experiment that explicitly focuses on the presence (vs. absence) of ambushers. The authors create two scenarios: sponsorship situations with a sponsor and sponsorship situations with both a sponsor and a competitor linked with the sponsored event (ambusher).…”

Unintended effects of memory on decision making: A breakdown in access control

“…Instead, it appears that the linking of the competitor to the event, which occurred in the counter-ambushing message, was having an effect on intrusions in the absence of a memory for the ''not sponsor" information that was the central theme of the counter-ambushing message. Humphreys and Cornwell et al (2010) argued that this occurred because the cues that were being used (the event, the Day 1 context, the concept of a brand name) were more likely to cue the name of the competitor than they were to retrieve the ''not sponsor" information.…”