Due to increased competition and media fragmentation, today companies are looking for alternate media by which they are able to differentiate their offerings. One such medium is sponsorships. Sponsorships for companies is becoming increasingly expensive, the companies are therefore exploring alternative strategies whereby they get dual benefits of saving the sponsorship fee and at the same time reap the benefit of the event. Ambush marketing is one such technique. Ambush marketing can be defined as a marketing strategy where in the advertisers associate themselves with and therefore capitalize on a particular event without paying any sponsorship fee. From a theoretical perspective, what happens is that a company is able to garner the goodwill and popularity of an event without paying anything for the event. Even the authorization from the concerned parties is not taken. The word ambush comes from French verb “embuschier” which means “to place in a wood”. The term was coined by Jerry Welsh. The associated danger of ambush marketing is that the official sponsor who has paid for a heavy amount for the event loses its identification as well as it reduces the intended effectiveness. This paper seeks to address the various issues related to ambush marketing in detail. The focus shall be to study the concepts, its type, its current relevance in the marketing scenario and its impending dangers. The focus shall also be towards the recent strategies which the companies are adopting in the light of Ambush Marketing and what are its implications on the sponsor as well as the target audience.
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