Ambush - a battle for minds

What a sporting summer it was - Wimbledon, Lewis Hamilton winning the British Grand Prix, the World Cup and of course the undoubted success of the Tour de France in the two Yorkshire stages. All very entertaining stuff but with plenty of sport still to come this year spare a thought please for the Lawyers and Marketers who will be crossing swords before, during and after these major sporting events.  

If you blinked you may have missed it but just after the half-way point of the York to Sheffield stage of the Tour de France, half a dozen cyclists were filmed sipping Coca Cola. If you saw it you may have been thinking “hmm... what a terrible example to the kids. Athletes yes, but their teeth must be shocking! Don't they know that after the initial sugar rush they will slump?”. But imagine if you were Britvic - Britain's greatest soft drinks company. Britvic, through its French brand Teisseire, had a contract with the Tour de France so that they, and Fruit Shoot, were the Official Supplier to the Tour. In seconds the return on that investment was challenged when the camera caught the Race Leaders quaffing Coke. 

And surely only the most battle hardened of Lawyers would not have raised a smile in acknowledgement of Zippo's opportunism when a plain-clothed police officer used one of their lighters when the torch carrying the Olympic Flame blew out.   

Then there is the World Cup. If you did not know already, Adidas were FIFA's Official Partner for the tournament. However it was difficult to overlook the impact of Nike's branding such was their omnipresence.