Ambush Marketing - New Zealand is in Search of Events to Host

摘要

The purpose of this article was to describe the environment in which ambush marketing takes place and thereby to place the MEMA in its context. The MEMA is unique in that it is generic legislation that delivers extensive protections to major event organisers and their associates. Chief among those protections are provisions that prohibit ambush marketing.rnAn underlying theme of the article was that a justification for legislation such as the MEMA has not been made out. The legislation is based on an untested hypothesis-that the legislation will assist New Zealand bidders to attract major events which, in turn, will deliver significant economic, social and cultural benefits to New Zealanders. There are two untested and, hence, unproven aspects to this hypothesis-first, that major event organisers will be attracted to a South Pacific nation with a population of a little over four million people in a different time zone from the television audiences in the United States and Europe; and, second, that events will deliver the promised benefits. The article has therefore taken a sceptical approach to the argument that legislation will ensure that the benefits delivered by the protected events will outweigh the negative aspects of the legislation, namely, the restrictions on commercial activity and the way in which the legislation prevents ordinary consumers from making choices about the products and services available to them.rnThe article introduced the background to ambush marketing by describing the scenarios that illustrate classic ambush marketing or ambush marketing by association and expansive ambush marketing or ambush marketing by intrusion. It went on to present the main propositions to be taken from the work of Jerry Welsh, the originator of ambush marketing. It also described the results of research into consumer attitudes towards ambush marketing. That research strongly supports the proposition that the public do not care about the practice of ambush marketing, a conclusion that raises doubts about the need for the legislation in the first place.