Companies invest large amounts of money to be sponsors of large events like the Olympics or FIFA World Cup.  But do they really see the fruits of their investment? They go in with the hopes of gaining more market share, increasing brand awareness, creating social impact and showcasing their products and services.  What they get out of it is hard to measure but evidence shows that on average sponsorship doesn’t exactly correlate with the above mentioned benefits due to market ambushing, that like we saw in class, they can mitigate the efforts of the official sponsor and gain profits by appearing to be one.

People are bombarded with so many Olympics-related advertising, that it is hard for them to discriminate which brand is the official sponsor.  A survey trying to find out whether sponsorship in the Beijing Olympics has been effective found that  while Adidas was the official Olympic sponsor, 40% of the sample thought it was Nike and 10% thought it was the Chinese brand Li Ning.  Adidas spent millions to be the sponsor but Nike had a less costly sponsorship, supporting a famous Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang and thus effectively reducing Adidas’s sponsor benefits.

Nike Ad on Building uses more “Gorilla Marketing” Techniques

Adidas Ad