Ambush marketing
Ambush marketing is when a company or organization associates itself with an event without paying sponsorship money. In this case there is no sponsorship. After all, the company has not officially associated itself as a sponsor with this event, but does pretend in marketing activities that this relationship exists. There are even forms of ambush marketing in which organizations like to make the target audience believe that it is an official sponsor with the goal of profiting from the suggested association. This is why ambush marketing is also called stealth sponsorship.
A well-known example of ambush marketing is a condom manufacturer that published an advertisement during the Olympics where the five "Olympic rings" could be seen but clear association could be made with the top view of condoms. Although the bottom two rings were different from the original Olympic rings in terms of coloring, the overall image clearly showed an association being made without an official sponsorship agreement.
In addition to a full form of ambush marketing, there may be related hook-up activities. This can be seen as an indirect form of ambush marketing. Here allusions are made to a particular sporting event without directly using official logos. This form of surreptitious sponsorship is frequently visible around events such as the World Cup and European Championship soccer where, for example, many supermarket organizations and suppliers of TVs, for example, like to get a piece of the action. In many countries Ambush Marketing is illegal because it is at the expense of the revenue model of the real sponsor and in some cases even of the image of the event itself.
