After releas­ing a faux entry into Dori­tos’ Crash the Super Bowl con­test, New­cas­tle Brown Ale, which describes itself as scrap­py and punch­ing above its weight class, is extend­ing its No Bol­locks nar­ra­tive to an ambush cam­paign of sorts ask­ing small brands to pool their resources for a Super Bowl spot. This effort nice­ly illus­trates how ambush mar­ket­ing has changed over the years. As it stands, ambush mar­ket­ing has become much more of a delib­er­ate strat­e­gy and includes more clever cam­paigns. And while it does raise some legal con­sid­er­a­tions, ambush mar­ket­ing can help rein­force brand ethos while also poten­tial­ly con­nect­ing with new audi­ences.

New­cas­tle Brown Ale has said it is in no posi­tion to spend $4.5 mil­lion on 30 sec­onds of air time dur­ing a foot­ball game, so it launched “Band of Brands,” or what it calls “the first-ever crowd­fund­ed Big Game ad” for the Super Bowl.

It’s a good exam­ple of a brand cap­i­tal­iz­ing upon a big event with­out shelling out big bucks to par­tic­i­pate via offi­cial chan­nels. It’s also a good exam­ple of a more cre­ative attempt at so-called ambush mar­ket­ing as the art of the ambush evolves from mere­ly try­ing to get pub­lic­i­ty at an event to an actu­al cam­paign strat­e­gy.

Banding Together

In exchange for what New­cas­tle calls “a small con­tri­bu­tion,” it says any brand can join its team and “have its logo and mes­sag­ing fea­tured in an actu­al Big Game spot.”

The brand announced Band of Brands after anoth­er ambush effort of sorts in which it post­ed a mock entry to Dori­tos’ Crash the Super Bowl con­test, the Frito-Lay brand’s annu­al call for con­sumer-gen­er­at­ed TV spots, or what New­cas­tle calls its “Unof­fi­cial Snack Chip Con­test Sub­mis­sion.”

Pro­mo­tion for Band of Brands also includes a video star­ring actress Aubrey Plaza. New­cas­tle says Plaza will star in two videos “aimed at draw­ing com­pa­nies to the Band of Brands project and teas­ing the final Band of Brands commercial’s debut.”

Nick Maschmey­er, strate­gist at adver­tis­ing agency Droga5, said this is the “first stage of the cam­paign,” in which the brand “[uses] celebri­ty tal­ent to get the video in front of peo­ple and get them talk­ing about it and get oth­er brands sub­mit­ting to be part of the ad…[and] once we sort of solid­i­fy tour team and get every­thing in place, we will shoot the mega ad,” which he says, “will be on TV dur­ing the game, but don’t exact­ly know where or when.”

Maschmey­er said the brand will broad­cast a 30-sec­ond spot, but will release a longer-form spot online as well.

Per a press release, inter­est­ed brands can sub­mit pro­pos­als on the Band of Brands web­site through Jan­u­ary 19 with the only qual­i­fi­ca­tion being that the brands are “sim­i­lar to New­cas­tle in spir­it and tone and sense of humor,” Maschmey­er said. (How­ev­er, New­cas­tle will remain “the exclu­sive beer brand of Band of Brands,” he said.)

Accord­ing to Maschmey­er, New­cas­tle has had “a few bites already” and the brand “[hopes] to take on more,” but he would not dis­close how many brands are involved, say­ing once they have been vet­ted through Newcastle’s legal depart­ment, the brand will announce part­ners as they roll in.

As of Jan­u­ary 19, New­cas­tle has announced five brands in its Big Game Band: snack brand Bean­i­tos, Arm­strong Floor­ing, McClure’s Pick­les, con­sumer elec­tron­ics and gift prod­uct brand Sharp­er Image and pre­paid wire­less ser­vice Boost Mobile.

“We’ll take as many as we can cram into a sin­gle ad with­out it being too over­whelm­ing,” Maschmey­er said. “The more we get, the bet­ter, as it helps defray costs.”

The brands will be fea­tured in dif­fer­ent ways, but Maschmey­er notes the team “[hasn’t] quite fig­ured it out yet.”

Band of Brands fol­lows Newcastle’s 2014 Super Bowl suc­cess with its If We Made It video, which Maschmey­er said was “essen­tial­ly an attempt to hijack the Big Game con­ver­sa­tion with a cam­paign about how epic our Big Game com­mer­cial would have been if we had made it.”

The video gar­nered about 740,000 views.

“So that was a lit­tle bit tongue in cheek, pok­ing fun at the pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive nature of a 30-sec­ond spot in the Big Game and us real­iz­ing that we didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have the mon­ey for the spot, but we would be a great con­tender to make an epic Big Game spot if we had made one,” Maschmey­er said.

This year is about work­ing with­in the Big Game sys­tem “that rewards the behav­ior of pay­ing $4 mil­lion and see­ing if we could find a way to get in with­out hav­ing to pay that mon­ey, which we still don’t have,” Maschmey­er said.

That’s why the brand first tried to crash Dori­tos’ Crash the Super Bowl effort. (Maschmey­er said New­cas­tle “broke about 15” of the con­test rules so Dori­tos was “not able to con­sid­er [its entry] offi­cial­ly.”)

And New­cas­tle isn’t alone in attempt­ing to steal a bit of Dori­tos’ thun­der with some ambush tac­tics. SumofUs.org, which calls itself “a move­ment of con­sumers, work­ers and share­hold­ers speak­ing with one voice to coun­ter­bal­ance the grow­ing pow­er of large cor­po­ra­tions,” released a sim­i­lar mock entry video, A Cheesy Love Sto­ry, to draw atten­tion to rain for­est destruc­tion. As of Jan­u­ary 16, the video has about 970,000 views on YouTube, but the orga­ni­za­tion said it had more than 1.5 mil­lion views in the first 48 hours on Face­book.

Maschmey­er said New­cas­tle was also inspired by recent trends in crowd­fund­ing and the shared econ­o­my.

“We don’t have $4 mil­lion and lord knows most brands are the same, but we all have some mar­ket­ing bud­get,” he said. “Let’s get togeth­er and pool our resources and cre­ate an ad that fea­tures us all togeth­er with­out hav­ing to pay the $4 mil­lion.”

Band of Brands, he said, “essen­tial­ly democ­ra­tizes Big Game adver­tis­ing for small, scrap­py brands that don’t get to be heard every year dur­ing the Big Game. It’s a nice idea that the lit­tle guys can be heard above the peren­ni­al adver­tis­ers that you see every year that have the deep pock­ets to afford Big Game air time. We like that a lit­tle bit of inge­nu­ity and team­work can get you to the same place.”

It’s also a strat­e­gy that fits nice­ly with­in the brand’s long-run­ning “No Bol­locks” nar­ra­tive, which, per the release, “takes a light­heart­ed, no-non­sense, hon­est approach to mar­ket­ing by shin­ing a light on the sil­ly, stale and some­times decep­tive clichés often found in beer adver­tis­ing.”

Anoth­er good exam­ple of the brand’s No Bol­locks phi­los­o­phy was a 2014 cam­paign to pay Twit­ter users $1 to fol­low it.

“Our cre­ative plat­form is real­ly about sort of tak­ing the piss out of mar­ket­ing and cheap gim­micks and sales tac­tics. The only thing we’re seri­ous about is beer. Every­thing else is a lit­tle more light­heart­ed,” Maschmey­er said. “We don’t mind mak­ing fun of our­selves. ‘No Bol­locks’ direct­ly call out the cheap gim­micks and clichés of mar­ket­ing in gen­er­al, or we do the exact same thing that the oth­er mar­keters and brands are doing, but exag­ger­ate them to their log­i­cal extreme to point out the bol­locks of their mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.”

And the tim­ing is good for anoth­er iter­a­tion.

“The Big Game felt real­ly, real­ly right for us – basi­cal­ly it’s marketing’s birth­day and the one day of year when Amer­i­cans are seek­ing out ads,” Maschmey­er said. “The con­text of us to be play­ing in [a space where con­sumers are] seek­ing out ads feels like a nice oppor­tu­ni­ty for New­cas­tle to get our voice in there and be able to com­ment on the hype around the ads going on at that time.”

While the New­cas­tle tar­get is typ­i­cal­ly men 25 to 39 who are pre­mi­um beer drinkers, Maschmey­er said, “What we real­ly like about the poten­tial for part­ner­ing with all of these brands is reach­ing lots of new audi­ences. I’m not going to use ‘syn­er­gy,’ but the abil­i­ty for oth­er brands to lever­age our con­tent on their own channels…and get our con­tent in front of new people…[is more] sub­stan­tial than if we were doing it by our­selves.”

For his part, Daniel DiGriz, pres­i­dent of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy firm Mad­Pipe, notes ambush cam­paigns appeal to younger crowds. In oth­er words, where­as Boomers respond to author­i­ta­tive reviews and endorse­ments, Mil­len­ni­als are much more inter­est­ed in peer reviews and “what is social, hip, trend­ing and cur­rent.”

What’s more, DiGriz agrees the New­cas­tle cam­paign is “like­ly to engage a whole new gen­er­a­tion that oth­er com­pet­ing brands are miss­ing out on and I think it will be real­ly pop­u­lar among a wide vari­ety of gen­er­a­tions.”

The Evolution of the Ambush

The New­cas­tle effort marks a real change in ambush mar­ket­ing from its ori­gins.

“As with most things, it’s your fault – it’s the Amer­i­cans’ fault,” said Simon Chad­wick, pro­fes­sor of sport busi­ness strat­e­gy and mar­ket­ing at Coven­try Uni­ver­si­ty.

That’s because the 1976 Olympic Games in Mon­tre­al were a finan­cial dis­as­ter with many spon­sor­ship deals sold for lit­tle mon­ey – on the order of 630 offi­cial deals – and so spon­sors didn’t get the ROI they want­ed and fans became cyn­i­cal at the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the Games, so the Olympic Com­mit­tee came up with a new mod­el for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, but, because of boy­cotts, it didn’t actu­al­ly debut until 1984 in Los Ange­les.

Instead of sell­ing lots of spon­sor­ships, the IOC sold very few for lots of mon­ey – on the order of 11 glob­al spon­sors.

“These com­pa­nies typ­i­cal­ly pay $100 mil­lion per Games to be asso­ci­at­ed with the event when it takes place,” Chad­wick said. “And obvi­ous­ly if you are Coke or McDonald’s or Adi­das and you’re spend­ing $100 mil­lion on an asso­ci­a­tion, you want pro­tect­ing.”

Today, bid­ding nations are even oblig­ed to pass leg­is­la­tion that is intend­ed to pro­tect offi­cial spon­sors from trade­mark and copy­right infringe­ment and also from ambush­ing, Chad­wick said. That includes pro­tec­tion and cat­e­go­ry exclu­siv­i­ty from the IOC, but also “almost cre­ates a closed club/society in which unless you have $100 mil­lion, you’re nev­er going to spon­sor the Olympic Games.”

That, Chad­wick said, led rival brands to start con­tem­plat­ing how to get around this and “a deci­sion emerged that ambush mar­ket­ing would be employed as a means of real­ly try­ing to asso­ciate with the event with­out huge rights fees.”

Post-1984, ambush mar­ket­ing emerged “just as a means for brands to asso­ciate with an event that they oth­er­wise had no legal right of asso­ci­a­tion with and prob­a­bly couldn’t afford to com­pete with any­way, but, over the course of time, [ambush mar­ket­ing cam­paigns] have become more seri­ous and sophis­ti­cat­ed and you see brands mak­ing delib­er­ate strate­gic deci­sions not to bid for offi­cial event spon­sor­ships and to real­ly imple­ment a strat­e­gy as ambush­ers and non­con­formist trou­ble­mak­ers,” Chad­wick said.

And this has only been ampli­fied by social media.

“Social is increas­ing­ly becom­ing the front line of ambush­ing because it’s very dif­fi­cult to con­trol and mon­i­tor, so what we’re start­ing to see is rival brands and com­pa­nies using [social in] inno­v­a­tive ways…,” Chad­wick said.

Book­mak­er Pad­dy Pow­er, for exam­ple, was “very, very smart in the way they went about their busi­ness” around the 2012 Games in Lon­don.

Accord­ing to Chad­wick, there is a small vil­lage in France called Lon­don that hosts an annu­al sport­ing com­pe­ti­tion, which Pad­dy Pow­er spon­sored in 2012.

“And what Pad­dy Pow­er did around Lon­don [Eng­land] around the time of the Olympic Games in 2012 was call itself ‘the offi­cial spon­sor of London’s biggest sport­ing event,’ and there was noth­ing the IOC could do,” Chad­wick said. “This was almost like a bypass attack strat­e­gy where there was no direct attack. What we see is very inno­v­a­tive and humor­ous approach­es to this kind of thing.”

In fact, Chad­wick said there are three gen­er­al types of ambush­es: Incur­sive ambush­es, which are very much about attack­ing rivals and under­min­ing offi­cial spon­sors; dis­trac­tive ambush­es, which are not nec­es­sar­i­ly designed to attack or under­mine, but rather to dis­tract from offi­cial spon­sors as New­cas­tle is doing; and asso­cia­tive ambush­es, which are not about direct­ly attack­ing a rival either, but about stand­ing along­side an event and the offi­cial spon­sors “in the hope that the halo effect of spon­sors and events some­how shines upon these brands stand­ing along­side them,” Chad­wick said.

There is also the real-time mar­ket­ing exam­ple of Mars, whose Snick­ers brand tweet­ed about bit­ing play­er Luis Suarez dur­ing the World Cup.

Chad­wick said this is an exam­ple of an oppor­tunis­tic ambush.

“Mars has no legal right of asso­ci­a­tion,” Chad­wick said. “But this was very, very smart and humor­ous.”

So, for a brand that doesn’t have $100 mil­lion lying around, is ambush­ing a good strat­e­gy?

The legal con­sid­er­a­tions are obvi­ous­ly quite impor­tant and brands that don’t have a legal right of asso­ci­a­tion must be care­ful to avoid words, images, logos, col­ors and any­thing else that might sug­gest an asso­ci­a­tion with the event, Chad­wick said. But beyond pun­ish­ments and fines, brands must also con­sid­er how ambush­ing an event will “play out in terms of con­sumer per­cep­tion,” he adds.

An ambush at an event like the Olympics, which show­cas­es nation­al pride, might pro­voke an adverse reac­tion among con­sumers, mak­ing the Olympics a high-risk ambush event, Chad­wick said. An ambush cam­paign also has to fit with­in a brand’s image.

Some brands use ambush­es as posi­tion­ing state­ments and as part of their brand iden­ti­ty and rep­u­ta­tion, Chad­wick said, point­ing to Nike, which has used ambush­es to under­mine Adi­das since the 1990s.

“So clear­ly to posi­tion your­self as an ambush­er implies that you are a non­con­formist, you are dan­ger­ous, you are against the main­stream, you are pre­pared to con­tra­vene con­tentions,” Chad­wick said. “For brand man­agers or spon­sor­ship man­agers, it’s an inter­est­ing thing. In one sense, it can help rein­force exist­ing brand per­cep­tion, but, his­tor­i­cal­ly, if [your brand] has been seen as safe, secure and trust­wor­thy, to sud­den­ly oper­ate out­side the main­stream [would not be a good fit].”

In oth­er words, banks, which are sup­posed to be trust­wor­thy, prob­a­bly wouldn’t want to con­sid­er ambush cam­paigns, he adds.

This Means War?

In addi­tion, Chad­wick notes how preva­lent war imagery is with­in ambush mar­ket­ing.

“Essen­tial­ly what New­cas­tle is try­ing to do is cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty of ambush­ers that will ambush togeth­er,” Chad­wick said. “It’s very, very inter­est­ing that the use of the word ‘ambush,’ is war­like.”

In addi­tion, in order for offi­cial spon­sors to stop ambush mar­keters, the tac­tics are no less war­like – it includes intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and infil­tra­tion, Chad­wick said.

Or, in oth­er words, “You have a few choic­es – you either bomb the hell out of them or try to win hearts and minds,” Chad­wick said.

So, for exam­ple, Super Bowl adver­tis­er Bud­weis­er could either go up against an ambush­er like News­cas­tle and “real­ly use its bud­get, strength and pow­er to real­ly sup­press their mes­sages,” Chad­wick said. “Or the alter­na­tive is to win the bat­tle for hearts and minds. If peo­ple know who Bud is and what they’re doing and how syn­ony­mous the rela­tion­ship is between [the brand and the Super Bowl] and when con­sumers think about the Super Bowl, it evokes images around Budweiser…and it’s a nice, warm, fuzzy glow…it doesn’t mat­ter what New­cas­tle does.”

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Bud­weis­er is fol­low­ing up on its wild­ly pop­u­lar Pup­py Love spot from 2014, which has near­ly 55 mil­lion views to date, with anoth­er Super Bowl spot with a pup­py in 2015.

This, Chad­wick said, is a great exam­ple of win­ning the bat­tle for hearts and minds.

“If there is a close­ness between you and your cus­tomers and they like you then it real­ly doesn’t mat­ter what your rivals do,” Chad­wick said. “It is very dif­fi­cult for them to break the bond and under­mine your rela­tion­ship with your cus­tomers. The exam­ple with the pup­py is great. What the hell does a pup­py have to do with the Super Bowl? But it doesn’t mat­ter because every­one likes pup­pies and it leaves a great feel­ing in the hearts and minds of con­sumers.”

Band of Brands was cre­at­ed by in part­ner­ship with Droga5, Fast Horse, and Medi­aVest. New­cas­tle is import­ed by Heineken USA.

What’s your take on ambush mar­ket­ing?