The art of crashing big events: brands occupy the trending topics

Too good an opportunity to pass up. After all, when does one ever launch a new series in the very market that hosts the Olympic Games with the largest social following? Two champions and an ice hockey rink: Heated Rivalry, which has landed in Italia on HBO Max and intertwines sports competition and emotional storytelling, has turned the ice into a narrative stage. Competitive rivalry coexists with personal tensions and hidden identities. The series follows two rival stars in a secret relationship that shatters stereotypes. The launch was accompanied by a mix of film scenes and real images from theWinter Olympics in Milan-Cortina.

It is the advance of ambush marketing with brands 'crashing' major events. In the month marked by Italian and international events - including the SuperBowl, Olympics and Sanremo Festival - even among companies there are those who pay to be there and those who try to be there without paying.

It is the grammar that over the years has found the ideal stage in initiatives with a strong following. It happened at the London Olympics 2012 when Nike launched its 'Find Your Greatness' campaign, evoking the games without being its official sponsor and thereby overshadowing its competitor and official partner Adidas. Or again at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with the case of Bavaria beer with models in orange dresses in the stands, an action that forced FIFA to intervene. But today the ambush is no longer just physical but algorithmic, coming to preside over trending topics and social moments in real time, exploiting memes and newsjacking. Thus ambush becomes a lateral visibility strategy capable of intercepting the media wave without buying official rights, redefining the logic of presence in the era of continuous conversation. During the Olympics with the relatedmedia peaks of winter sports such as curling and skiing, Decathlon decided to preside over the conversation with educational and promotional content on Olympic disciplines, transforming sports interest into traffic and sales.

The Danish brand with a strong presence in Italia Ceres is known for its real-time social campaigns during Europeans and World Cups, despite not being an official sponsor. All this is accompanied by ironic content related to the matches and the national team: memes and posts published in real time that ride the collective attention on the event even though without sponsorship rights, a typical case of conversational ambush. With an aggressive and ironic social strategy, even the airline Ryanair uses global sporting events and viral moments to insert itself into the media flow. In Italia, there is also a funeral parlour that sets the standard: today, Taffo misses no opportunity to entertain those who appreciate the black humour genre. But politics also enters the field in this digital agon. The video posted by the PD on social media and then removed, linked to the referendum on justice that used images of Olympic curling, represents an example of non-commercial conversational ambush: appropriation of sports imagery at the height of the Olympic media peak to amplify public debate.

The arena has moved from stadiums to feeds, from billboards toconnected screens. Thus, ambush becomes a lateral visibility strategy, capable of intercepting the media wave without buying official rights, redefining the logic of presence at major events in the era of continuous conversation. Thus ambush marketing - the evolution of that pioneering form of guerrilla marketing - today becomes algorithmic as well as urban.