Passing by a roadside billboard recently (below is a miniature version I found in the Minneapolis skyway system), my first thought was, wow, McDonald’s is getting into the juicy lucy business:

Until more focus revealed that State Farm Insurance is the one behind the ad. Look familiar?

No doubt burgers and car insurance are

Remember how important it is to stay on the right side of the suggestive/descriptive line when it comes to making proper use of a brand name?

We have cautioned about the danger of “taking a suggestive name, mark, or tag-line, and using it descriptively in a sentence on labels, packaging, ad copy, or the Internet,”

There is a new billboard advertisement on the scene in Minneapolis, Minnesota, complete with multiple meanings and at least one obvious third party brand reference.

Multiple meanings because I suspect there may be a generational divide on the obvious Starsky and Hutch brand reference (trademark data of owner Columbia Pictures can be found here,

The answer is, apparently not. This falls under the category of, some things aren’t what they seem to be, or maybe they are just that, so let me try to explain.

Blog posts don’t always turn out the way you might think at the start, and this one is a perfect example of how they can