1991: PhD examines ambush marketing

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Tags: business, centenary-edition, law

Sarah Kelly, BCom, LLB (hons), MBA, PhD

For most of the world, the lighting of the Olympic flame in Beijing was a moment in history.

Dr Sarah Kelly

But for University of Queensland researcher Sarah Kelly, it was also a well-planned ambush.

Dr Kelly graduated in July 2009 after spending three years studying the practice of ambush marketing.

Dr Kelly’s PhD, titled “Ambushers or Sponsors? An Examination of Sponsorship Linked Marketing”, looks at the impact upon consumers of sponsorship advertising at major events and its relationship to ambushing.

Ambushing is a creative marketing strategy, where companies form an association with an event without legitimately securing sponsorship.

Dr Kelly’s research focused on ambushing at sporting events and the effects of ambushing on the value of sponsorship for companies.

“You get free-riding competitors like Li Ning, the Chinese sporting brand whose namesake chairperson so memorably lit the Olympic flame,” she said.

“There are also more subtle ambushing practices of securing lower-tiered sponsorship of individual athletes or teams, while effectively diluting top-level sponsorship of the event by category competitors.

“A key finding of the research is that the presence of ambushing can potentially weaken consumer recall for true sponsors and that adequate leveraging of sponsorships by legitimate sponsors can combat the adverse effects of ambushing.”

Dr Kelly said her research showed companies could take steps to ensure their sponsorship dollars were well spent by budgeting for sponsorship-linked advertising to leverage the brand-event connection once sponsorship was secured.

Dr Kelly’s journey to the podium to collect her PhD has been a long one – after a career in law and completing an MBA, she completed her doctoral research while juggling lecturing and tutoring and raising four young children.

“It was an inch-by-inch, incremental approach,” she said.

“I wrote a lot in my pyjamas late at night after the kids had gone to bed.”

By Tegan Taylor

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