Does a $5 Footlong Make You Think of the Olympics?

“Start the new year right at Subway,” says light heavyweight boxer Mike Lee in a recent TV ad for the sandwich chain. The promotion for Subway’s $5 footlong sandwich goes on to show a bearded astronomer—Galileo maybe?—spotting a blimp through a telescope, former Olympic speed skater Apolo Ohno standing in front of a Zamboni, an anonymous snowboarder above a mountaintop half-pipe, a pair of figure skaters, a circus ringmaster brandishing a wand, and then Australian snowboarder Torah Bright standing in a lodge somewhere.

Sitting in front of the TV the other night, at the end of this 30-second mélange, my wife turned to me and asked when the Sochi Olympic Games were starting. In that moment, Subway had succeeded in what advertisers call “ambush” marketing. They created an association with the Olympics without paying millions for the right to call themselves an official sponsor. “This is obviously a deliberate strategic decision that they have made,” says Simon Chadwick, a professor of sports business at Coventry University who tracks ambush marketing. “They are trying to suggest that in some way they have an association with the Olympic Games.” Subway declined to respond to questions about whether any link with the Olympics was intended.