Effects of Humor in Ambush Marketing

It is common practice today that not only official sponsors but also other brands try to benefit from mega-sporting events through associative advertising. Non-sponsors can generate similar awareness and image transfer effects as official sponsors and therefore undermine the exclusive rights of official sponsorship. This practice is often referred to as “ambush marketing”. Official sponsors can counter ambushing by counter-communication, a relatively new and informal way of approaching ambushers. This project examines the effects of humor in ambush marketing counter-communications. The effects of humorous anti-ambush ads on consumers’ cognitions and evaluations related to the brand are analyzed and compared with other approaches to counter-communicate such as educational campaigns or so called “name & shame” ads.

Experiment

Preliminary findings indicate that humorous counter-ads produce ambivalent effects when compared with other forms of counter-communication. Affective processes mediate positive effects of humorous ads compared with all other strategies. However, the cognitive effects of humor are ambivalent: humor is less effective than educational counter-ads, whereas the humorous approach is superior compared to name and shame campaigns.