CorpComms Magazine

Businesses are being warned of the risks involved if they engage in 'ambush' marketing in the run up to the 2012 London Olympic Games.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport are in the process of putting new legislation in place to protect the official sponsors of the Olympics from smaller businesses who may try to advertise for free.

More than one third of marketers said that their business would almost certainly carry out some form of marketing around the time of the London Games, while 88 per cent knew little or nothing about the Olympics Act, according to a survey on marketing trends by the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

But the International Olympic Committee has stringent rules surrounding the use of its brand and logo and, if the police perceive a serious contravention of these, they have the authority to enter any business premises.

The committee is particularly concerned about ambush marketing, which it defines as 'any attempt by an individual or an entity to create an unauthorised or false association (whether or not commercial) with the Olympic Games, the Olympic Movement, the IOC, the National Olympic Committee of the host country or the Organising Committee of Olympic Games thereby interfering with the legitimate contractual rights of official marketing partners of official marketing partners of the Olympic Games'.

Even though the rules are ambiguous, the penalties can be severe. There is a need to distinguish between those companies who  intentionally try to mislead and suggest that they are an official sponsor, and those who are merely trying to advertise their own product.

The 2012 Olympics has cost the British public almost £9.3 billion and the official sponsors are paying a total sum of £930 million. The 'Tier One' corporate sponsors, who include British Airways and Lloyds Banking Group, have each paid an estimated £40 million.

Even those companies who have been awarded tenders to supply the Olympics have no legal rights to use official emblems or advertise their business or product in association with the London Games in any way.

Businesses are even restricted from using certain words which are considered linked to the Olympics. There are two lists, 'A' and 'B', each containing different 'listed' or prohibited words. The guidelines state that no two words from list A can be used together and no word from list A can be used with words from list B. An example is that 'twenty-twelve' cannot be used in conjunction with 'summer' or 'silver'.

Jerry Welsh, former global marketing head at American Express, said: 'Ambush marketing, correctly understood and rightly practiced, is an important, ethically correct tool in a non-sponsoring company's arsenal of business.' He claims that money seems to triumph over 'Olympic spirit' while penalising small companies.

However, Welsh's views entirely contradict the International Olympic Committee which considers ambush marketing an 'illegal way of doing business'.

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