Remember this North Memorial Health billboard ad — sporting a plain and literal Google reference — that we wrote about a few months ago, where nominative fair use was pretty clear to me?
Well, a new set of North Memorial billboard ads rolled into to the Minneapolis skyway system, just in time for Super Bowl LII, with essentially the same message, but without a Google mention.
Do you think Google was behind North Memorial’s move away from the Google reference, or was it part of the original plan to grab attention, then migrate to a more generic online search mention?
Does North Memorial showing it is able to communicate essentially the same idea without Google’s help impact the nominative fair use analysis? So, how do you come down on this one?
In case you’re wondering why I’m not writing about Super Bowl LII and the television commercials, as has been typical here on the day after, let’s say I’m still letting it sink in, so stay tuned.