What is "ambush marketing"

n. (context business English) A marketing strategy wherein advertisers associate themselves with, and therefore capitalize on, a particular event without paying any sponsorship fee.

Ambush marketing or ambush advertising is a marketing strategy in which an advertiser "ambushes" an event to compete for exposure against competing advertisers. The term "ambush marketing" was coined by marketing strategist Jerry Welsh, while he was working as the manager of global marketing efforts for American Express in the 1980s.

Most forms of ambush marketing capitalize on the prominence of a major event through marketing campaigns that associate an advertiser with it, but without actually having paid sponsorship fees to the event's organizer to identify themselves as an "official" partner or sponsor. An advertiser may engage in ambush marketing in "indirect" means—where the advertiser alludes to the imagery and themes of an event without any references to specific trademarks, or in "direct" and "predatory" means—where the advertiser makes statements in their marketing that mislead consumers into believing they are officially associated with the event (including the fraudulent use of official names and trademarks), or performs marketing activities in and around a venue to dilute the presence of "official" sponsors.

Action against ambush marketing is most common in sport; the practice has been a growing concern to the organizers of major sporting events—such as FIFA ( FIFA World Cup), the International Olympic Committee, and the National Football League, as ambush marketing can devalue the exclusive sponsorship rights that are sold to other companies, dilute the exposure of official sponsors, and in some cases, infringe upon the organizers' intellectual property.

In an effort to control ambush marketing, organizers have, in recent years, required the host cities of their major events to enact special laws restricting the use of an event's intellectual property, restrictions on non-sponsors creating unauthorized "associations" with an event by referring to certain words and concepts, and the ability to ensure that only authorized advertisers may have marketing presence within a specified radius of the site. Such regulations have attracted controversy for limiting freedom of speech, and for preventing companies from factually promoting themselves in the context of an event.