Close-Up: Live Issue - Does 2012 need anti-ambush laws?

How the London Olympics Bill aims to protect the official sponsors better.

The 2012 London Olympics is more than six years away, yet tension among marketers is rising as the Government attempts to usher in laws that have been slammed as Draconian by the House of Lords.

Last week, the House began debating the anti-ambush marketing provisions in the London Olympics Bill, which will ban non-sponsors from using words such as 'gold' and 'summer' in ads that 'seek to create an unauthorised association' with the Games.

A famous ambush-marketing example was Linford Christie's appearance at the Atlanta Olympics wearing blue contact lenses with a white Puma logo in the centre. This stimulated media interest and dismayed Reebok, an official sponsor.

At the same Games, another non-sponsor, Nike, handed out flags displaying the Nike logo to spectators and bought up all the poster sites in the city. When Starcom Media Services asked US TV viewers who the Games' official sponsors were, Nike came second.

There have been scores of similar incidents, despite attempts by the International Olympic Committee to stamp out ambush marketing with its brand protection policy. This offers brands on The Olympic Partnership programme a venue devoid of advertising or political messages. But brands still manage to subvert their non-official status, garnering coverage and exposure in the process.

It's a threat the IOC and the 2012 organisers take very seriously Because, as Timo Lumme, the IOC's director of TV and marketing, says: 'Ambush marketing has the capacity to wipe out the Olympic movement as it exists today.'