• by Amy Corr , April 5, 2005

Ambush marketing strategies have always been a part of the media buying game. Witness Fox's decision to pull a Super Bowl campaign by Miller beer, which took a jab at Super Bowl ad giant Anheuser-Busch's new light beer. Undeterred, A-B instead bought local airtime in select markets. They reached their audience--just a lesser number. Now that practice is creeping into the field of branded entertainment, raising big questions for marketers who tie into product placement deals that are often known well in advance of when they air, giving competitors the opportunity to ambush their efforts.

That was the case when pizza chain Papa John's broke an ad campaign ambushing rival Domino's Pizza's placement in last week's episode of NBC's "The Apprentice." In the episode, "Apprentice" teams were tasked with creating a new flavored pizza. Concurrently, Domino's launched spots for its new American Classic Cheeseburger Pizza during the show. A new pizza flavor was created by the marketer itself, not by any of the teams on "The Apprentice."

After investing plenty of dough on this placement (the ad featured the Donald himself), you'd think that Domino's came out the big winner by the time the show was over.

Enter Domino's competitor Papa John's.

The company one-upped Domino's by purchasing local ad time during "The Apprentice" touting a meatball pizza, which "coincidentally" was the flavor pizza made by both "Apprentice" teams. The spot showed Papa John's Founder John Schnatter in a boardroom encouraging people to tell the competition "they're fired." The best part of the ad was Schnatter saying: "Why get a pizza made by "The Apprentice" when you can get a pizza made by the pros at Papa John's." Oh, the irony.

View the Papa John's commercial here.