Organisers have signed Australian-based event management group IMG to implement a brand protection programme designed to stamp out ambush marketing at the October/November event in Sydney following incidents at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
IMG senior international vice-president Jonathan Cocke said his team had already taken preventative action against two websites and a local bank regarding their attempted tie-ins with the game.
He said the World Cup promoters had previously taken legal action over the issue of ambush marketing, however, there had been no need for legal recourse to date over the Australian event. Once an ambush marketer is discovered, Cocke said the brand protection team would first issue a 'desist' letter. Should ambush activity continue at the event itself IMG would send in patrollers to remove the offending material. "At the venues, rather like at the Olympics, there will be teams of brand protection people to ensure that unauthorised merchandise isn't being sold, that freebies aren't being given away," Cocke said.
Official sponsors of the 2003 Rugby World Cup include Coca-Cola, Visa, Qantas, British Airways, Telstra and Bundaberg Rum.
Cocke would not explain how much money was tied up in the sponsorship and said it was impossible to estimate how much value an ambush marketer could steal from an official programme.
Despite IMG's brand protection programme, Cocke is still bracing himself for some ambush marketing at the event."We don't know how much there'll be," he said. "We anticipate there will be some. We're putting these measures in place to reduce it."