Last week, we discussed Caribou Coffee’s billboard ad referencing transparency — this week another installment from Caribou’s current Minneapolis skyway billboard campaign:
That one made me think of this one, a post from a few months back about Kind nutritional bars and their Ingredients You Can See And Pronounce tagline and trademark:
Marketing types, if you were a brand manager for Kind, would you want to extend that feeling toward Caribou’s advertising use of: “INGREDIENTS — you can — ACTUALLY PRONOUNCE”?
Trademark types, what say you? Does the omission of the word SEE make a material difference? Does the addition of ACTUALLY make a material difference? Actually?
How significant would it be to you that Kind appears to have extended that feeling, directly or indirectly, by not opposing, to a salad dressing brand using Handcrafted With Ingredients You Can Pronounce?
Or, has the phrase “ingredients you can pronounce” just become too common any longer to have a meaningful scope of protection from a trademark perspective?
Last, as to the subject of trademark pronunciation, have you forgotten about these little gems from the archives?