Eskort’s Springbok-themed guerrilla marketing campaign — a runaway success, despite the legal wrangles — is prompting debate in the ad industry about brand association with national sports teams.
Eskort, maker of bacon and polony among other pork products, launched a through-the-line campaign in August to promote its cooler box product, the “Springbox”. This coincided with the beginning of the Rugby World Cup.
Eskort and its ad agency, MetropolitanRepublic, unveiled a “Go Springbox” billboard at OR Tambo airport on the day the national team left for the tournament in France.
The South African Rugby Union (Saru) threatened legal action and served papers to compel Eskort to remove it.
The campaign, which later included television executions, featured a leaping pig logo instead of a Springbok and the creation of a fictional company pitchman. It generated considerable social media hype, with some accusing the company of embarrassing the country by misspelling the team’s name.
The airport billboard even resulted in a plea from the Springboks’ director of rugby, Rassie Erasmus: “Guys, can we please respect our sponsors who have carried us financially and have walked a long way with the team?”
Saru, saying its intellectual property (IP) rights had been “ambushed”, went to the Gauteng high court.
Kamogelo Sesing, executive creative director at MetropolitanRepublic, says the billboard was designed to be a “head-turning trigger” to launch the campaign.
The Saru-Eskort row has focused attention on how tightly the Springbok name is trademarked and controlled, and sparked discussion about whether satire in advertising is an infringement of IP rights. It’s an old debate and one that is unlikely ever to be resolved.
Interestingly, while the name Springbok is trademarked, the MetropolitanRepublic legal team says that to the best of its knowledge variations such as Bokke and Amabokoboko are not. These were not used in the campaign.
The agency believes a new debate is needed over parody in advertising. While agreeing that official sponsors should maximise all the rights they buy, it suggests there should be leeway for “clever and creative marketing” such as the Eskort campaign that simply wanted to create “national excitement and a sense of camaraderie”.
After the campaign broke, other brands jumped on the bandwagon, including a courier company that delivered a “Springbox” to the home of a fan.
MetropolitanRepublic says its campaign budget was R6m and had a return on investment of just over R30m.
Internal tracking data revealed social media impressions of just more than 45-million and a billboard reach of 638,000 on a property that usually gets only 60,000 eyeballs. There were just over 8,000 pieces of online user-generated content.
Sponsors will, of course, have a different view on the issue
Two marketing industry sources tell the FM that guerrilla marketing campaigns, often celebrated for their creativity and direct consumer engagement, can pose significant risks to rights-holders.
“When an unofficial brand executes a guerrilla marketing strategy where official sponsors have paid considerable sums for exclusive advertising rights, it undermines the value of sponsorship,” one source says.
“This act not only dilutes the sponsor’s visibility but can also create confusion among the target audience.”
The other source says: “For official sponsors who adhere to the rules and regulations, it suggests that rule-breaking is rewarded with attention, potentially encouraging a dangerous precedent where companies might sidestep legal protocols to gain a competitive edge, thus escalating an environment of unfair competition.”
Both say while guerrilla marketing can offer a high reward for relatively little outlay, it comes with significant risks. An ethical consideration is the potential harm to the carefully constructed strategies of official sponsors, and to the integrity of the marketing ecosystem at large.
