Question Mark Brands?

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Steve Baird

A couple of months ago I blogged about Branding Exclamations!

Before that I blogged about Increasingly Intense Ellipsis Branding . . . .

Now, it appears I must revisit the subject of punctuation mark branding given Cadbury Adams' new Mega Mystery Stride brand gum, prominently featuring a question mark logo on the packaging where the S logo normally appears.

The mystery apparently surrounds the presently undisclosed flavor of the gum. The unknown flavor appears to be part of Stride's claimed Ridiculously Long Lasting Gum, not to be confused, of course, with Wrigley's Curiously Strong mints and gum (Altoids).

Anyway, my daughter brought a pack of the ? gum home and said, "Daddy, you should blog about this," so now you know the inspiration for my curiously strong or ridiculously long attention to this subject.

I fully expected to find a pending trademark application filed by Cadbury Adams for the "?" symbol, given its ridiculously flavorful interest in single letter chewing gum brands. To my surprise, however, I found none, at least yet.

As you might have imagined, I did find some "?" trademarks of others, as shown below. Do you recognize any of them? Each "?" image is linked to the corresponding trademark record at the U.S. Trademark Office.

 Mark Image Mark Image Mark Image Mark Image Mark Image Mark Image   

Turns out, there is a ? trademark battle heating up too. Not in the world of confections, but rather in the world of fashion. Just days ago, Guess IP Holder L.P., owner of the famous Guess brand, filed a Trademark Opposition against one of the above Question Mark logos, guess which one?

It asserted ownership of these federally-registered trademarks:

 Mark Image  

But not any of these, for some reason:

Mark Image Mark Image

To find out, click here for a link to a copy of the Notice of Opposition.

Any more questions?

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I See Blue Ovals

Posted on August 28, 2009 by Dan Kelly

I think Steve once remarked something to the effect that the Internet is employment security for trademark attorneys.  Road tripping is too.  On one such recent occasion, my wife remarked on the similarity of Culver's blue oval signage to Ford's famous blue oval. 

 

Obviously, there is no issue here from a trademark infringement standpoint.  Culver's is clearly in the fast food business, and Ford is an automotive company.  No, the intrigue for me was how I started seeing blue ovals everywhere!  First was Carrier:

Then I noticed the Nasonex logo on a note on my desk from a promotional notepad:

Then the one that put me over the edge, the one that has now made me believe that there is a proverbial vast right-wing marketing conspiracy to toy subliminally with my latent positive associations with blue ovals:  Malt-o-Meal.

As if this were not enough, Brad, reading over my shoulder, suggested I take a look at American Idol:

Yikes!  What's more, Brad pointed out that Ford is a major sponsor of American Idol!

Joking aside, isn't it kind of interesting that of these examples, several use a light line to help outline the oval?  From a design standpoint, it seems to enhance the overall shape and clarity of the designs that use it.  I have a secret hope that there is some James Burke-esque "Connections" link in the depths of humanity's art history that might explain the blue oval phenomenon.  I wonder how many marketing surveys exist that show positive associations with blue ovals?  Is this just a case of sensitivity on my part to the phenomenon, or could I find similar phenomena with, say, green triangles?

While you lose sleep (or not) over these questions, feel free to pass the time running Internet searches for the words "blue oval" to see which of these blue ovals might claim to be the blue oval.  (Hints here here here here here and here.)

UPDATE:  The hits keep coming:

 

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