There are basically two types of ambush marketing. The first – the more blatant type – involves using a name or logo which might suggest a connection with the event. The situation here is that:

• There are certain logos that you absolutely cannot use without consent and that you probably won’t quibble with. For example, the official World Cup logos, and the official logos of previous World Cups. There are quite a number.
• There are certain terms that you absolutely cannot use without consent and that you might quibble with. For example, South Africa 2010, RSA 2010, SA 2010, Africa 2010, World Cup 2010, Football World Cup, Soccer World Cup and FIFA World Cup. Eastwoods, the pub near Loftus which recently agreed to a consent order in favour of FIFA, had painted the words World Cup 2010 on its roof.
• There are certain terms that you absolutely cannot use, but only if you happen to be organising a football competition. In other words, you can use these terms in relation to any other business. Terms like 2010, World Cup, South Africa World Cup, World Cup South Africa, Cape Town 2010, and the names of all the other host cities followed by 2010.
• Then there’s a grey area. For example, can you use the numeral 2010 with the word soccer or soccer imagery? Or the term World Cup with soccer imagery? FIFA in its Public Information Sheet – which you’ll find on its website www.fifa. com – says, no. It’s worth bearing in mind that just because FIFA says something is unlawful, doesn’t make it so – we do still have courts. It is, however, also worth bearing in mind that FIFA is aggressive when it comes to IP rights and it has a lot more money than you do. So if you do something which FIFA doesn’t like, you are likely to find yourself in court.
• What about soccer imagery on its own? The FIFA website seems to imply that this will be fine. So Kulula’s use of soccer balls on its planes is OK! I would’ve thought so, but I recently read that at the 2006 World Cup, FIFA successfully sued Lufthansa for doing something similar, the argument being the German company’s atypical light- heartedness was prejudicing the rights of the official airline sponsor, Emirates. I look at the extremely wide wording of some of the prohibitions: “misrepresenting a contractual or other connection with the event, associating your brand with the event, creating the impression that your communications relate to the event,” and I no longer feel sure about anything.

The other type of ambush marketing is the sneakier type, where you might not use any name or logo which suggests a link with the event, but you still arguably derive some benefit from it, often through sheer physical proximity. The Merchandise Marks Act is wide enough to stop you using your own brands (with no reference to soccer, 2010 or anything similar) in or around the stadiums, if that use creates an association with the event or alludes to it. So clearly, handing out your company’s t-shirts to fans outside the stadium will not be allowed. This prohibition will be enforced through regulations passed by the host cities. These regulations are likely to create exclusion zones around stadiums and fan parks and alongside major routes to stadiums, where no brands other than FIFA’s or those of the sponsors will be allowed. It does, however, seem that businesses which are already situated around stadiums will not need to pull down signage. These regulations will, in all likelihood, also make dedicated police officers and efficient courts (things the rest of us never get to see) available to FIFA.

A quick summary then! Well, when it comes to using terms which might suggest a link with the event, avoid all of those which are expressly verboten. The terms which are allowed outside the context of football competitions are obviously fine, but I wouldn’t combine them with anything like football wording or imagery. Football wording or imagery on its own should, I think, be okay. As for the other type of ambush marketing, we’ll just have to wait for the city regulations to come out.

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Hans Muhlberg LLM MITMA, is an attorney, a UK solicitor and a UK and European trade mark attorney. He consults to Moore Attorneys in Johannesburg.

Of course, product placement is not totally new to Oscar-nominated films. Who can forget the bashing K-Mart took in 1988’s Rain Man. In 1994 Pulp Fiction idolized McDonald’s “Royale with Cheese.” Two years later Jerry Maguire was begging you to help you help him… with a Reebok endorsement. In 2003, Lost in Translation put Bill Murray’s gravitas behind Suntory whiskey. Juno quirkily lampooned Sunny D and Tic Tac. Then there is the “original” product placement, Reese’s Pieces in 1982’s E.T. Even 1953’s Roman Holiday was a boon for the Vespa brand. But aside from a few iconic inclusions and a bunch more forgettable background placements, Oscar-caliber films have been largely free of brands. Not this year.

Both The Blind Side and Up in the Air are films in which product placements not only figure prominently, but also serve as character- and plot-driving props. The brand inclusions both inform the story and move it forward. In the former, a Taco Bell franchise empire pays for the BMWs and tony private school education of both hero and heroine. Boasting even more brand integration, the latter film takes at its very core a commercialized world, where brands like Hilton and American Airlines can be a protagonist’s familiar compatriots and conflict-creating antagonists.

The real groundbreaking development this year is that both Up in the Air and The Blind Side serve as rebuttals to the argument that product placements ruin films. The very contention of these films for the year’s top spot is also a contention that, if done properly, “product placement” and “good movie” do not have to be mutually exclusive concepts.

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This article was sourced from Brand Channel and can be found here.

Volvo’s online episodes aren’t that kind of naughty. But for a brand whose DNA has always been about safety and staidness, even after a radical styling overhaul several years ago, these three web films are naughty indeed.

They’re test-track performance-and-handling demonstrations of the S60, allowing viewers to use a virtual dial to go from a tame-and-traditional test to one where the car is swerving around a goldfish bowl placed on a slalom cone to the third level of “naughtiness,” which shows an S60 driving backward.

Then fans can submit their ideas for as “Level Four” driving experience that Volvo could produce into another web film.

“The campaign objective is to spark conversation about the new model among driving enthusiasts by demonstrating the S60’s driving dynamics, design and innovative technology,” the brand says.

So, for the last level – perhaps something in outer space?

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This article was sourced from the Brand Channel

In fact, Japan could end up being one of the biggest victims of the crisis. Unemployment is at a 40-year high (5 percent), GDP at a 35-year low and contracting at a rate never recorded before. Wholesale prices dropped for the first time in five years and last year Japan experienced the first trade deficit in 28 years. Not only is the contraction dramatic, it is also much worse than the decline experienced in the United States or Europe (in some of the indices three times worse than the beleaguered U.S. economy). Corporate Japan responded to the crisis by slashing staff levels, cutting salaries and overtime, as well as suspending production at numerous plants. Consumers responded too, by dramatically cutting back on spending, delaying large purchases and changing consumption patterns.

It is true that Japan’s reliance on foreign trade makes it particularly vulnerable to economic downturns in other markets, but that is not the full picture. Consumer spending accounts for more than half of the economy, and it is clear that Japanese consumers played a big part in the cycle that drove the economy down. The Japanese are generally regarded as cautious and the uncertainty brought on by the downturn certainly was not conducive to consumption. As the crisis was unfolding, I was struck by how differently various nations were responding; it seemed that an underlying national characteristic influenced their responses: Japanese risk-averseness, Chinese self-reliance, Brazilian exuberance. It is true that each country faced unique challenges, but some markets seemed more inclined towards a positive response. In poll after poll, the Japanese were rated as the most pessimistic consumers in the face of the economic crisis. It did not help that Prime Minister Aso was particularly unpopular at the time (I think it’s Obama envy) and that Finance Minister Nakagawa was forced to resign after, according to him, his cough medicine made him appear intoxicated at a G7 news conference in February.

Dutch academic Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions could explain these variances in the response to crisis. He researched how national values affect attitudes in the workplace and the result is a fascinating classification of more than 70 countries around the world. His initial model differentiated cultures according to four dimensions: Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity and Uncertainty Avoidance. He later added a fifth dimension, based on Confucian dynamism, Long-Term Orientation (which is not only applied to Asian markets). He contends that, despite the typical human instinct that would like to believe that “deep inside” all people are the same, we are not.

The Hofstede Cultural Dimension profile for Japan shows a low Individuality score and very high scores for the Masculinity, Uncertainty, Avoidance and Long-term Orientation indexes. The low Individuality score indicates a collectivist society that values loyalty to the member group. High masculine societies expect men to be more assertive and women more nurturing, while the high Uncertainty Avoidance shows a low level of tolerance for uncertainty and implements rules and regulations to try to eliminate this uncertainty. According the Hofstede, Buddhist/Shinto communities, like Japan, have Long-term Orientation indexes as the most closely correlating dimension.

This description of the Japanese society probably fits with the typical outsider’s view of the culture. Definitely not individualistic – the Harajuku Lolita Girls, Goths and Punks and other exceptions aside – the level of conformity in dress, attitudes and behaviour is uncanny. There is also a high need to maintain harmony and this is evident in the strong preference for consensus decision making and the practice of nemawashi (pre-decision consultation and lobbying). Clearly a masculine society too. For example, there is only one female member in the cabinet and her task is to tackle the country’s declining birth rate (a very stereotypical role, but in a display of true commitment to her job, minister Yuko Obuchi announced in February 2009 that she was pregnant for the second time). Despite many corporate and governmental programmes, most Japanese companies are significantly behind in terms of gender equality – companies where 10 percent of managers are women are regarded as enlightened. Another interesting point of masculine societies is that brands play a very important role in communicating status and success, which brings us back to the heavily branded shoppers on the streets of Tokyo. As a marketer, how would you pry their wallets open?

If you know that your customers have high risk aversion, distress sale type advertising will probably not do the trick. Given the Japanese need for a sense of belonging, coupled with the need for status and recognition, an exclusive customer club is probably a good idea. It is therefore not surprising that most Japanese retailers already have very sophisticated loyalty programmes. In South Africa, my participation in loyalty programmes was limited to Exclusive Book’s Fanatics and a couple of airline frequent flyer programmes – and I was quite a passive participant at that. In Japan, I have a pointo kado for quite a number of stores (point card, pronounced “pointo kado” due to the way it is spelt in Katakana) and I am still an utter novice compared to how other Tokyoites manage their loyalty programmes.

Clothing retailer Banana Republic, for example, offer their club members access to promotions before it opens to the public. Members receive invitations well in advance detailing the promotions on offer and the week before the sale, with no promotional point of sale messages in store, club members qualify for discounts on presentation of their cards. No fuss is made, as the loyalty card is swiped the amount due simply drops by 30 percent. The benefit is more than just getting a head start on the mid-season sale; customers are treated as valued members of an in-group, rather than mere bargain hunters and this must build loyalty. The tone of communication between invitations to view the new summer collection and this season’s secret sale is also 100 percent aligned. Some top-end shopping centres take these secret sales further. Earlier this year, Roppongi Hills shops held a by invitation only sale offering discounts of up to 70 percent in a discreet location in the centre. In June, a shopping centre in Omote-sando launched a seven-day campaign that offered selected customers free parking, a complimentary glass of champagne and enticing discounts on selected items, all you needed to do was to show your invitation card to the shop assistant.

Not everything is, of course, as intricate. Department store Mitsukoshi rewards customers purchasing cosmetics with discounts on future purchases within a set period. To support the campaign, staff provide customers with a variety of product samples that compliment the product purchased. In April, clothing chain Ito Yokado enjoyed a 20 percent sales increase after offering customers the opportunity to “recycle” their used clothes in exchange for discount coupons. The advertising emphasised the ecological merits of participating in the promotion rather than the discounts. Naturally, not everything is as subtle: discount price advertising abound particularly in the electronics districts and there has been a marked increase in the number of street promoters advertising special prices. Then there is Alcohol Y who, in their response to the crisis, doubled the alcohol content of their beverages to 8 percent without increasing the price. While it is obvious what the impact on their customers would have been, it is not clear yet what the impact was on their sales, if at all.

In April 2009, the Japanese government announced a 10 trillion yen (R827 billion) stimulus package that included a cash handout to families of 12 000 yen per adult and 20 000 yen per child (R1 000 and R1 600 respectively). While the Japanese government has received a lot of criticism on their response to the crisis, I believe they should get credit for linking the stimulus package to their environmental goals. Also included is a “scrap incentive” that encourages car buyers to replace their older vehicles with newer, more ecologically friendly ones. The scheme reduces vehicle tax by 50-100 percent, based on the fuel efficiency and emissions of the model, which could result in a saving of as much as 80 000 yen (approximately R6 600). In the first month of the programme Nissan, for example, experienced a 30 percent increase in demand for vehicles that qualify.

There are further plans to introduce a 250 000 yen (R20 700) rebate for replacing cars older than 13 years with ecologically friendly cars. An “eco point” system will also be introduced that will reward customers with up to 36 000 yen (R3 000) for buying an energy efficient appliance and up to 5 000 yen (R400) for recycling an old one. The programme will run for one year and the intention is not only to revive the hard-hit appliance industry, but also to shape consumers’ future preferences.

Many retailers and travel agents have responded with offers to customers on how to spend their stimulus payout. One of the cheekiest was fast-food giant, MacDonald’s, who in May launched a coupon booklet costing 12 000 yen (the exact amount of the adult payout) that offers 20 000 yen’s worth of meals.
Certain prefectures (the best South African equivalent would probably be a metro council) also announced local incentives for cars and appliances produced in their districts. The aim is to encourage consumption where the products are manufactured; clearly hoping that increased demand would lead to normalised production levels, which in turn will restore income and consumption levels in their communities.

There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel: Japanese consumer confidence is showing small signs of recovery, domestic production levels are increasing, Japan has returned to a trade surplus, still 85-99 percent lower than March/April last year, but at least it is not a deficit. The consensus is, however, that it is going to be quite a long tunnel, which is probably not surprising given the nation’s character.

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Gerhard Fourie Gerhard Fourie is senior manager for Brand and Marketing Communication for General Overseas Markets at Nissan Motor Company in Japan. His responsibilities cover markets across South America, Africa,
the Middle East and Asia. Before his transfer, he was the general manager for Marketing and Planning at Nissan South Africa.

Most critical of these is positioning. A compelling brand proposition is essential, capturing the essence of what makes a brand different and special and creating a tightly defined origin point for every consumer touch point – from packaging to advertising and everything in between. It’s impossible to create persuasive communication if positioning is weak – you will never reach a destination if you don’t know what that destination is.

The task of marketing also remains the same – and contrary to popular belief it’s very simple. You need to understand the cultural framework of your target consumers, what they currently believe about your brand and what you want them to believe. Concisely framing this gap is the essence of good marketing.

Belief in a brand’s difference and advantage is the end point of a good campaign. Awareness is worth very little – you can be aware that Robert Mugabe is president of Zimbabwe but that doesn’t mean you believe he is any good at the job!
And if creating belief is the goal of brand communication then the task of marketing becomes one of persuasion – a truth easily forgotten in a world of portfolio strategies, conversion funnels and segmentation models.

So, enough of the enduring fundamentals. What has changed? 20th century marketing was based on the theory that consumers make rational choices about what to buy based on differentiating features and benefits. The role of advertising was seen as informing and persuading founded on an underlying premise that assumed the following causality: Telling leads to hearing, which leads to changed perceptions, which in turn leads to changed purchase behaviour.

This approach evolved over time, employing emotion to increase attention and better facilitate information processing – but it was still all about getting consumers to listen to a logical argument.

Society has however moved on very quickly in the last few years – in first world markets consumers now pretty much have everything they need and what’s left – their wants, tend to be more emotionally driven and poorly articulated. Consumers have also become more informed through access to the internet and this has led to much higher expectations of the brands they use and lower loyalty than was the case in years gone by.

The number of commercial messages that hit consumers has also skyrocketed to an incredible 1 500 per day in developed markets – making the competition for their attention white hot.
So the time for ‘telling and selling’ has past, we now need to engage consumers emotionally. With the advent of PVRs consumers can filter any advertising they don’t want to watch. YouTube is also commercial free – so unless you choose to view an ad online you’re unlikely to see it. Brands can’t interrupt anymore; they need to earn the attention of consumers.

The ‘So what?’ of this is that to be successful brands will need to focus more on their behaviour than their communication. They will have to know who they are and behave with authenticity, integrity and consistency. They will have to move beyond interrupting consumers to engaging them and creating trusting relationships. This change represents a new paradigm – where we move from brand management and a focus on making the right decisions, to brand leadership where we focus on inspiring consumers. Inspiring them to notice our brands amongst those 1,500 commercial messages they see every day and stirring their soul as well as engaging their brains. We must also respect and reward their time and attention, understand their interests and their lives and start standing for something they like and admire.

The threat of the ‘fast forward’ button will quickly become a constant reminder that we need to earn consumers’ attention and put engagement at the heart of our marketing thinking.

Media consumption patterns are also changing quickly. In first world markets like the UK, younger consumers have stopped watching television altogether – they select the content they want and view it online. This completely removes the advertiser’s opportunity to interrupt with commercial messages. It also however, represents an opportunity to connect with consumers at minimal cost. If a company is able to create brand communication that consumers want to watch, and they invest in letting their target market know where they can find it on the internet through social networking sites and mechanisms like paid search, they can create significant reach for their advertising at minimal cost. Commercial messages that consumers seek out are also much more likely to be effective in changing brand perceptions than those that they stumble across inadvertently. Marketing is like a rope – pulling works much better than pushing.

Of these challenges, flagging where to find branded content is relatively easy. What is harder is to create communication that people want to watch that is also persuasive of brand difference and advantage. It’s a sobering thought that soon, rather than being the hallmarks of a great ad, these attributes will become the qualifying criteria for a commercial to have any impact on consumers.

Using the model below it’s possible to classify all commercials across two continuums – ‘engagement’ and ‘persuasion’.

In the bottom left quadrant, boring, unpersuasive advertising has always been a waste of money.

The bottom right quadrant of persuasive but dull messaging has historically been pretty effective however. If brand owners interrupted what consumers were watching with a decent argument they had a pretty good shot at influencing sales. Typically this space has been occupied by professional marketing companies like Unilever where the brand thinking was strong but creative ambition often lacking. The opportunity to interrupt is disappearing fast however, so this safe approach will quickly cease to be effective.

Then we have the top left quadrant – where brands make engaging short films and stick a logo on the end. Often the companies that produce work in this category are weak at marketing but have big advertising budgets. Engagement without persuasion is of little or no value however, so they are wasting their investment. Measuring advertising only with indicators like awareness and liking – or more recently internet downloads – is also dangerous. Tracking the impact on consumer belief in a brand’s difference and advantage is what’s important.

With good brand thinking, creating persuasive communication is relatively easy. If companies give up on persuasion, making engaging short films is also straightforward. Combining engagement and persuasion to land in the top right quadrant is however extremely difficult.

Strong brand positioning will therefore become ever more important – because it enables ambitious creative thinking. When he founded Y&R in the 1940’s Raymond Rubicam noted that the power of any creative idea is inversely proportional to
the number of times it’s been used before. That is as true today as it was sixty years ago. So to be successful in the future, marketers will need to nail down precise, single minded brand positionings and then have the courage to ask for and buy creative thinking that is fresh and different.

And this is perhaps the greatest challenge – because doing anything genuinely different is uncomfortable and risky. Maybe this new world of communication is the just the jolt that marketers and advertisers need to raise their game.
Bill Bernbach once said “The real giants have always been the poets, those who jumped from facts into the realms of imagination and ideas”. Very soon to be heard at all, we’ll all need to make that jump.

In the uncomfortable days ahead we can perhaps take some solace in the words of Einstein who once remarked “If at first an idea isn’t absurd there is no hope for it.”

In this new paradigm, dull and ordinary will be banished forever to be replaced by absurd imagination. Removing the ‘safe’ option may be the best thing that has happened to advertising in a hundred years.

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Geoff Whyte started his working life as an economist with Exxon- Mobil in London. After which he became head of business development for Pepsico’s UK Restaurant business. This led to a stint as Marketing Manager for KFC UK and then promotion to Marketing Director Southern Africa.

He then moved back to London as Business Development Director for Pepsico Europe before leaving the company to become Managing Director of Unilever UK’s Out of Home Business, and later European Category Director for Foods. Geoff then joined SAB Miller where he worked as an internal strategy consultant in South Africa and the United States. This led to his appointment as Marketing Manager for SAB South Africa where he oversaw the revival of the Hansa Pilsener, Castle Lager and Castle Milk Stout brands.

He joined Cadbury as group Marketing Director for Southern Africa in March 2006 and has grown market share for the company in every category in which they operate. During his tenure
they have also won a number of marketing and advertising awards. Geoff was recently named the Sunday Times Marketing Person of the Year for 2008. He was appointed to his current role of Commercial Director, Cadbury Africa Middle East in October 2008.

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