The one-up sport

It’s one of the most cited fables among innovators. The US government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) supposedly invested millions in a pen that could write in space, withstanding the sub-zero temperatures and the zero-gravity situation. The Russians simply used the pencil.

Is the marketing discipline heading towards a situation similar to that? If you consider some winning cases from this year’s Cannes Lions as some sort of an indication, this could well be so. Last weekend, as the curtains came down on this year’s advertising Oscars, some of the noteworthy winners of the Grand Prix awards were companies such as Volvo and Google. These brands won top honours for their ability to outsmart key competitors by using low-cost solutions that were engineered to deliver high impact.

Take the example of carmaker Volvo. In the NFL Super Bowl, a 30-second advertising spot during its telecast reportedly costs around $4.5 million.

Most of the major car brands with deep pockets had booked television spots on the day of the big game on February 1, 2015. Not Volvo.

Instead, the brand took to microblogging site Twitter, with a vengeance. During the big game, every time any rival carmaker’s ad appeared on television, Volvo held a contest asking consumers to tweet the name of the person they would nominate to win a Volvo XC 60. Volvo called this social campaign “The Greatest Interception Ever.” With the #VolvoContest getting around 2,000 tweets per minute every time other car brands ran their ad on television, Volvo claims to have changed the narrative.

Instead of one loud roar of advertising on television, Volvo chose a series of ongoing conversations about the brand on social media, thus stealing the game from the competition. The company claims that its XC 60 sales increased by a whopping 70 per cent in the month following the game, the highest in its segment.

Virtually smart Technology giant Google did pretty much the same thing to its competition (read Facebook). Last year, while the social networking giant Facebook reportedly spent $2 billion to acquire virtual reality gaming company Oculus VR, Google had other plans. Google decided to get people excited about virtual reality through a cardboard device that cost a mere $20, making the experience of virtual reality instantly accessible to anyone who owned a smartphone. In comparison, an Oculus Rift DK2 costs around $350.

Since its launch in June 2014, Google claims that its third-party manufacturers have made and sold more than one million cardboard viewers and developers have created close to 600 cardboard compatible apps. Among the brands that created campaigns using the cardboard were Lionsgate, Converse and, of course, the Volvo XC 60.

Is the trend of outsmarting competition here to stay? For starters, ambush marketing by itself might not be a new concept. Even in India, the most quoted example is the “Nothing Official About It” campaign by Pepsi when arch rival Coca-Cola had spent millions to pick up the official rights during the cricket world cup in the mid-1990s. “With so many brands now in every category, it’s become a way of marketing. It’s just one more weapon in the armoury attracting often the top-end of consumers in each segment,” says Sunil Lulla, chairman and managing director, GREY group India. The agency’s New York office was behind the Volvo ‘Interception’ campaign.

Others see this as a passing phase. “Marketers will always seek to connect with consumers in a meaningful and cost-effective way. I don’t think this will be a trend, because opportunity will not always present itself to outsmart the competition,” says Srinivasan K Swamy, chairman, RK Swamy Hansa Group.

Senior marketers like Ronita Mitra, Senior Vice-President – Brand Communications and Insights, Vodafone India, point out that not every brand can resort to ambush marketing. “You have to be a well-established brand to pull off a successful ambush marketing exercise,” she says. Sanjay Tripathy, Senior Executive Vice-President and Head-marketing, product, digital and e-commerce, HDFC Life, adds that long-term branding should be done on a sustainable basis, and not as a one-upmanship game. Ambush marketing helps you create awareness in the short term but you need to follow up with many more activities, he says.

But does ambush marketing have the potential to slow down the mega budget ad campaigns? “Not at all,” says Lulla. He adds that share of voice by value has gone up, the medium-wise spend is changing and digital is adding to the disruption. “What was done by Volvo was opportunistic. Will that stop them from spending on large campaigns? Very risky, and therefore doubtful,” says Swamy. Point noted, with a pencil.

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