Late last year Trade and Industry Minister, Rob Davies,
announced that the government intended to declare the 2013 Afcon
tournament a 'protected event' in terms of the
Merchandise Marks Act. This means that the severe ambush marketing
restrictions that characterised the 2010 FIFA World Cup will apply
to the African Cup of Nations football tournament, which will take
place between 19 January and 10 February 2013, and which will be
coming to a city near you provided that you don't live in Cape
Town – the host cities are Johannesburg, Durban Port
Elizabeth, Rustenburg and Nelspruit.
But what exactly is ambush marketing? In essence, ambush
marketing occurs when a business tries to get mileage out of an
event that it hasn't sponsored. The most obvious way for a
business to do this is to use the event's branding – the
name, the logo, the strapline – in relation to its own
product. This is, of course, illegal. In the first
place, it is highly likely that the organisers
