“You can be removed and, in some circumstances, fined, but ultimately once you’ve made an appearance there’s not much anyone can do.
“And, really, the fine is just a fee for getting great publicity,” he says.
Illman has occasionally paid his dues for good publicity.
In 2007, he made news when he spent over $40,000 fighting a $100 fine imposed by Perth City Council after he hired a man to walk around the cricket at the WACA with a cardboard cutout of Shane Warne advertising Messages On Hold.
He told Smartcompany at the time he was fighting the matter on “principle”.
Engage’s Mike Halligan agrees with Illman that ambush marketers can get away with a lot.
“You might get in minor trouble for not having council permits or something like that,” he says.
“The only time you’re really going to get yourself in hot water is if you make specific reference to a brand, or infringe upon trademark rights.”
Two Dutch women found this out the hard way in 2010, when they were arrested at the World Cup in South Africa and charged over the “unauthorised use of a trademark at a protected event”, and “entry into a designated area while in possession of a prohibited commercial object”.
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The women allegedly organised a stunt for Dutch beer company, Bavaria, which saw 36 women standing together in bright orange mini-dresses.
The only problem was, rival brewer Anheuser Busch’s brand Budweiser was the official beer sponsor, and World Cup organiser FIFA wasn’t happy.
But this isn’t to say ambush marketing stunts that infringe upon trademark can’t be successful.
Last month, Danish soccer star Nicklas Bendtner was fined €80,000 by the Union of European Football Associations after bookmaker Paddy Power, the biggest rival of key sponsor Ladbrokes, paid him to flash underwear bearing their brand after scoring a goal during Denmark’s Euro 2012 game against Portugal.
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Engage Marketing’s Mike Halligan says this was a “particularly successful ambush marketing stunt”.
Key sponsors often pay hundreds of millions of dollars to associate themselves with events such as the Euro 2012, making chicken-feed of Bendtner’s 80,000 euro fine, which Paddy Power paid on his behalf.
Images and video of Bendtner and his Paddy Power boxers were beamed around the world repeatedly.
Perhaps understandably, many event organisers are attempting to crack down on ambush marketing.
The organisers of the 2012 London Olympics have devised a strict “brand protection” policy in an attempt to safeguard their sponsors against ambushes.
Under the policy, spectators will be prevented from prominently displaying competing brands on their clothing, athletes may not tweet about brands that are not official Olympics sponsors, only VISA credit cards will be accepted, and existing corporate stadium names will be masked if they aren’t official Olympics sponsors.
But if Illman, Halligan and Crowe’s experiences are anything to go by, fines will have to reach the millions and prison terms may have to be imposed before enterprising ambush marketers will be deterred.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
