It’s been a rough couple of weeks for us mommies. First we get some slack for drinking at our children’s playgroups and now The National Pork Board is sending threatening letters to a stay-at-home mom. Luckily this debate seems to be a peaceful one as The National Pork Board CEO, Steve Murphy has contacted this mom to work on a resolution.

I think our first thought as laypeople is to get our panties in a wad when we get a letter like the one The Lactivist got. I mean, who wants to be sued? Nobody. And she’s not running some kind of animal porn website and using the pork slogan [although that would be kind of funny]. She’s running a website to promote breastfeeding and to raise money for her hometown’s milk bank. That’s a very noble cause. She’s promoting healthy choices for our kids. It’s understandable that we get upset when we feel that somebody is threatening a good cause.

Honestly, I think her shirts are hilarious. I personally like the “That’s my baby’s lunch your looking at” the best. Not that I’ve ever had that problem since I have the chest of a thirteen-year-old boy. But it’s funny nonetheless. And who hasn’t made a joke out the “the other white meat” slogan. Come on. They are just asking for parody there. And their marketing people knew it when they came up with it.

But I’m with Kerflop on this one. Jessica has some very good points about trademarking. And as a marketing major, I figured this would be the perfect [and possibly only] time to use my new found marketing knowledge to expand on that.

We see about 7000 ads a day. 7000. A day. That’s a lot. We see them on TV, on billboards, on somebody’s sweatshirt or on the can they are drinking out of or the box they pulled their lunch out of as they heated up their food in the communal microwave at work. We hear ads on the radio or or out of people’s mouths as they tell you about the great new Prada boots they bought over the weekend. We are bombarded daily. So it’s a tough job trying to come up with a good logo or slogan to position yourself in the marketplace.

Keaton has a subscription to Games magazine. On the cover of this month’s edition, they have pictures of a bunch of different candy bars and you are supposed to guess which candy bar it is just by looking at the bar. Inside they also have a game where they have included pictures of a section of the candy bar wrapper and you are supposed to guess which candy bar it is just from that small section. I got almost all of them right. Even though I don’t eat candy bars very often? Why? Because the corporations who make those candy bars have a big marketing department who spent many hours discussing branding and a lot of time on that packaging and a boat load of money on advertising so that we would recognize it. Branding and positioning are big part of any business. And it’s taken very seriously.

Here it looks like Big Business [or in this case, Big Pork] is being a big bully to a stay-at-home mom. And we take our moms seriously. [You know, unless they are drinking at playdates or working outside the home in which case they don't love their kids enough. You knew I was going to get that dig in there, didn't you?]. We get out our claws and get on the defensive when somebody attacks our moms. But Big Business Pork isn’t trying to be a big meanie. This is just how these things work.

Would it have been nice if somebody had just sent her a nice email that said, “Love what you’re doing here. It’s a great cause. And your shirts are quite funny. ‘The other white milk.’ Good one. But we spent a lot of money and man power on that slogan and would you mind not using a variation of it? Thanks much.”

Yeah, that would have been nicer. But Big Pork probably sees hundreds or maybe even thousands of products trying to gain money off of their slogan. Some of these products/websites/people may be outright stealing the slogan including the logo and font for their own gain and others like The Lactivist are just trying to be funny using a variation of the slogan without the logo and font. However, Big Pork has to treat them all the same. They are Big Pork after all. They don’t have time to pick and choose. They aren’t in the business of hunting down violators. They are in the pork business. They are just trying to protect their trademark. And they need to fight any time they see something that may be in violation of their trademark or they lose credibility.

The cease and desist letter wasn’t their attempt to beat her in to submission. It’s basically a form letter that their lawyers tweak a little for each case. Legalese has a lot of big confusing words and a lot of “including, but not limited to” and stuff like that just to seem important. After all, these lawyers didn’t go to school for that long so they could write broken sentences on a blog. [Or is it just me that writes broken sentences in her blog?] Take it from somebody who spends her whole day reviewing contracts. [I know. You wish you had my job. Sounds fun, doesn't it?] Legalese isn’t meant to offend. It’s just meant to sound official. [And possibly bore to tears those who read it daily...or maybe that's just me again.]

If The Lactivist took this to court would she win? It’s possible. We are allowed the right to parody in the U.S. But I’m no lawyer. And if she’s not really making any money off of it and she doesn’t really care about the shirt, why bother? Big Pork has a lot more money then many of us mommies. And they would fight the big battle to make sure we know they take trademark infringement seriously. So is it worth it? That’s for her to decide. But she’s got a great website and a lot of other hilarious shirts to promote her cause, so I think either way she’ll be ok.

*Am I the only one who feels a little dirty about “fighting the big pork fight?” Sounds like a porno gone bad.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 3rd, 2007 at 4:33 pm and is filed under In my humble opinion. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.