Kangaroos and Ambush Marketing

Canada has recently enacted brand-new intellectual property legislation in preparation for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver. The legislation targets ambush marketing, a topic about which Canadians know very little. Teresa Scassa, speaking at McGill’s Law Faculty last Friday, explained that ambush marketing is when a company carefully builds an association in the minds of the public between the company’s trademark and a major event – misleading its audience into falsely believing the company is an official sponsor.

One of the first cited examples of ambush marketing occurred during the 1984 Olympic Games, where Fuji was an official sponsor of the games but its commercial objectives were undermined by Kodak’s sponsorship of a major television broadcast and its association as the ‘official film’ of the US track team. Here Kodak used legitimate sponsorships to foster Olympic associations, but it seems big companies’ creative and legally-savvy marketers can always find ways to link their brand with an event.  Interestingly, the situation reversed itself for the 1988 Olympic Games, showing Kodak was perfectly willing to officially sponsor the event, while Fuji was equally willing to use ambush marketing techniques.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) claims the rise of ambush marketing has been undermining the commercial objectives of official sponsors and consequently attracting sponsors is now a more difficult task for event organizers. In response, countries are compelled…

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