It’s not too often that we see a trademark dispute that affects the marketing and advertising community directly (rather than just their clients), but the facts on this one read like answers to the Five W’s:
Who? Popular Greek yogurt manufacturer Chobani, its ad agency Droga5, and corporate leadership guru Dov Seidman.
As some of you might have noticed last week, a billboard advertisement in North Carolina appeared to show a scorned woman calling out her spouse for infidelity:
This billboard was followed sometime later by a different message:
Despite what should have been relatively clear evidence that this was intended to be a publicity stunt for Yodaddy’s, significant confusion initially existed among the media and the public as to the original intentions behind the messages. See, for example, here. Now this “scorned wife” billboard is not a new idea. Indeed, snopes.com–a website dedicated to confirming our debunking urban myths–documented a similar, but more elaborate stunt, back in 2006.