Ambush marketing and sports

Abstract

The tactics used to reach to the mind of consumer who come under the messages of brands that sent from different fronts such as thousands of products (advertising, public relations, sponsorship, point of sale activities, promotion, etc) differentiates and so to say It is lived lots of brand wars. Most of these wars are seen in areas of sports organizations. Sports is always in front of consumer in every moment of the life and being in brisk demand. It is transformed into an industry which has a large-scale by adding the power of influencing the sectors connected to each other.

The world's leading companies are trying to increase their market shares by benefiting from the charm of the sports.  Sports is one of the most popular areas about sponsorship. Sports has the highest share in the sponsorship areas. Ambush marketing has appeared as a major threat against sports sponsorship. Ambush marketing can also be described as an attempt of making the another company's name which is a competitor related with the event without paying a high price and also without violating the laws in the situations that official sponsorship exists in an organization which is involving the massess even a brand's sporting, social or even political event.

Anyway, the efforts of preventing ambush marketing applications by the event owners and sponsors becoming very hard. There is not a clear result about whether ambush marketing is an ethical application or not and if it has a positive or a negative impact on the sports marketing. Further investigations will show us whether the war against ambush marketing will be successful or not.