ambush marketing

When a company seeks to run an advertising campaign at the same time of an event which it does not sponsor or have any direct relevance to, but it nonetheless produces advertisements or carries out other activities to associate its brand with the event. Also known as guerrilla marketing.

Some (in)famous instances of ambush marketing include:

• Michael Jordan accepts money to cover up the Reebok logo on his kit when he accepts the gold medal for basketball at the Seoul Olympics.
• Nike sponsors the press conference given by the American basketball team for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, again starving official sponsor Reebok of publicity.
• American Express creates an ad campaign claiming (correctly) that Americans do not need 'Visas' to enter Norway, to counter Visa's claims that only their cards are accepted at the Lillehammer Winter Olympics.
• At the Bledisloe Cup rugby game in 2002 in Sydney, two streakers painted with Vodafone logos ran across the field.

In the United States, there is some legal recourse to genuine sponsors or organisers of events who find their message usurped by ambush marketers. The Lanham Act (Section 43(a)) bans advertising that falsely misrepresents a company as a sponsor or an affiliate.