How Hormel Foods Corp. is protecting one of its major trademarks underscores the delicate balance between protecting your brand and understanding the power of the public domain. And how crucial it is to find strategies such as educational campaigns, media interfacing and public polling that help you find that balance.
In the midst of the quest to protect the SPAMr name is a constantly evolving drama in cyber culture: for many today, spam is more closely associated with spamming - the practice of sending junk e-mail - than the canned meat product that's as all-American as Chevrolet and apple pie.
Which begs the question: What exactly is the right PR approach when a brand is being confused with a colloquialism, and you'd be taking on an army of millions trying to limit the usage of a word?
For Hormel, it has apparently been moderation. The public has yet to see any heavy-handed or heady advertising campaigns that attempt to draw the distinction between spamming and its product, which the company promotes as being consumed at a rate of 3.8 cans a second. But this is most probably one of those PR case studies whose final chapter can't be written until Hormel gauges whether or not a new generation of consumers associates the term spam with its flagship trademark.
"You want to protect your product but you don't want to be the bad guy," says Frank Corrado, president of Communications For Management, Inc. International, Chicago, which specializes in crisis management, media training and internal communications. "This is all about reputation management and it would be valuable for Hormel to take on some public-opinion sampling" and find out whether this is an issue for the consumer.
Attorneys we've tapped for some trademark perspective, including Barry Miller (with whom we spoke) and Jay G. Taylor (who has penned some online documents dealing with intellectual-property issues) point to a benchmark trademark issue that could likely mirror what happens in the SPAM controversy: the manufacturer of AYDS diet candies had to concede defeat to the proliferation of the AIDS acronym.
The Ingredients of Hormel's PR
Hormel has been far from despotic - but also far from apathetic - in protecting its trademark. While there has been little in the mainstream media about how Hormel execs really feel about the SPAM vs. Spam issue, it's also not fair to say the company has done nothing. What it seems to have done is selected the battles it has thought worth fighting, but accepted those it can't muscle.
Enter Hormel's attorney Kevin Jones, who's been saddled with making some sense of the situation. (After Hormel's Director of Public Relations Allan Krejci refused to comment to PR NEWS, Jones spoke with us briefly last week to relay what the Austin, Minn.-based corporation's position has been.)
So far, Jones said, the company has made a "conscious decision" not to fight the use of the word spam regarding its new Internet meaning.
But Hormel has also been pretty purposeful in making sure that the two aren't connected. Admits Jones: Hormel's in an "ongoing dispute" with Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, the Philadelphian who used the Spam name in connection with Cyber Promotions Inc., his junk e-mail business, and reportedly has a penchant for being photographed with cans of SPAM. (The word is a contraction of spiced and ham and the Hormel exec who came up with the product title in a 1936 contest won $100.)
But it has also made other conscious decisions: although Hormel has opted not to make the spam vs. SPAM controversy dinner talk for all Americans, it has hand-picked what journalists it'll make privy to its views, a kind of PR filtering that Corrado admits is being used more and more today.
Case in point: Krejci denied us an interview but the company invited staffers from Internet Underground magazine to its headquarters to share its views about the issue, a visit that resulted in an eight-page article that has an ample balance of Hormel's corporate spin, i.e., ".they are concerned about anti-spamming sites that use images of the SPAM can surrounded by a 'Do Not Use' symbol to indicate their hatred of bulk e-mail."
On the other hand, when CNET, Inc. writer Janet Kornblum decided to take on the issue this past summer, Hormel legal and corporate reps didn't return calls by her press time, according to a CNET article.
|
Tracking Trademark Law
One of the principles of trademark is that you can't use someone else's trademark in a way that creates the likelihood of confusion - and given that much of the linkage between SPAM and spamming is based on parody, Hormel probably doesn't have much of a leg to stand on in pursuing trademark violations in this vein. However, within the past decade, a federal statute has focused on the theory of "dilution," reducing the power of a trademark in the marketplace. This is where attorney David Wittenstein thinks Hormel has more of a shot at pursuing trademark infringements. The company could argue that a clear line needs to be drawn between the meaning of spam/spamming and its trademark. Hence, the more that pictures of its products are used in other contexts (for instance, a can of SPAM used in conjunction with content that focuses on sending junk e-mail), the potential exists for its trademark to be diluted. (David Wittenstein, 202/776-2782) |
Media relations aside, Hormel has reportedly issued several cease-and-desist actions against cyber users selling SPAM apparel. And Jones says the company won't refrain in the future from pursuing actions against "people who create a greater problem."
No Keeping the Lid On Spam Info.
Hormel can't limit the amount of information the media can get its fingers on about this issue or stop its ability to see just how informed the Internet generation is about spamming. When we performed a search on Infoseek using the words spam and Hormel, an amazing 27,102,452 documents were spit back. And we hit on every kind of humor, from a page headed "John's Shrine to Spam" to carryings-on about the "Spam-O-Saurus."
Hormel, however, is still in the process of constructing its SPAM site, a venue that's sure to clarify what SPAM really is - something good, not dreaded?
And ironically, in the midst of this maze, we stumbled across this PR bite: Hormel airlifted 5,500 cases of SPAM to Guam last month in typhoon-relief efforts. Bet few posting messages in news groups about spam knew that. (Hormel, 507/437-5611; Barry Miller, 301/230-6565; CFMII, 312/641-6915)