This is a blog response to Catherine Caverly’s Ambush Marketing: Clever Or Unethical.

The debate presented in Catherine’s blog post is essentially, is it ethical for Nike to ambush market major sporting events where it isn’t the official sponsor?

While I don’t think Nike is being completely ethical, I still feel as though that ambush marketing isn’t unethical. Ambush marketing is a creative way of circumventing certain limitations that inhibit the company from marketing its products. It’s kind of like using tax accountants to reduce your taxes. If I make a lot of money and I use tax accountants to find loop holes to reduce my income tax, is that unethical?

Furthermore, Adidas and most of the grand sporting events are not vulnerable entities. The fact that the World Cup received $100,000,000 from Adidas to be its official sponsor means that both organizations have a great amount of capital to sustain and protect their corporations. Ambush marketing isn’t like McDonalds preying on the fat or lingerie for young girls, it’s a strategy employed by Nike designed to defeat Adidas.

Nike utilized ambush marketing to save a huge sponsorship cost while still advertising its own products. Nothing is stopping Adidas from being the official sponsor and also utilizing interesting online videos to inspire the average person to support athletics.

Ethics has always been a grey area, but my response to Catherine’s blog is that I believe ambush marketing is extremely clever,