Authors: Julie Gingell & Simon Walsh It was widely reported last week that Unilever, the maker of Marmite, took steps to protect its brand by threatening legal action against the British National Party to stop it from using a jar of Marmite in its party political broadcasts. The jar of spread appeared in a BNP video which featured on its website. Nick Griffin claimed that the BNP had not been responsible for this because it had, allegedly, been inserted by “one of the people to whom [the Party] had given the broadcast to review” However, he went on to indicate that the jar of Marmite had been added to the broadcast in response to Marmite’s “the Love Party and the Hate Party” advertising campaign which has been running on television, radio and the internet. The BNP claim that the “Hate Party” was based on itself. Mr Griffin said, “Although we are not responsible for whoever it was who inserted the Marmite jars into the internet version of the broadcast, we do see the amusing side, quite simply if you start a spoof you should expect to get spoofed”. Unilever stated, “Neither Marmite nor any other Unilever brand are aligned to any political party. We are currently initiating injunction proceedings against the BNP to remove the Marmite jar from the online broadcast and prevent them from using it in future”. The video clip has now been removed from the BNP website but is still available on YouTube. The BNP was involved in a similar controversy back in March 2009 when the Manic Street Preachers’ hit “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” was played over some of its web content. After pressure was applied by the Manic’s record label, Sony, the song was removed with the BNP claiming the song had been mistakenly streamed from the site. Brand reputation is everything and in today’s high speed digital economy, you can see why Sony and Unilever were quick to move against what they understood to be infringements of their intellectual property rights. Years of investment in PR and brand development can be wiped out if your product/brand becomes associated with an offering that is perceived to be unfavorable. Both incidents demonstrate the importance of policing the use of your brands and products, especially on the internet, to ensure that they are not used for an unauthorised purpose.

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Legal Action in the News….. Brand Protection

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