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Marketing and advertising professionals are some of my favorite people to work with.
They are often creative, innovative, witty, fun, right-brained thinkers. But, as with any professional, not every idea they come up with is a homerun.
And this is one of the things that I enjoy most about being a trademark lawyer: learning about the questionable attempts at expanding well-known brands into new products.
Take for example, the Pillsbury Dough Boy's line of lip balms, including "Peanut Butter Cup Flavor Lip Balm," "Caramel Rolls Flavored Lip Balm," and "Gingerbread Flavored Lip Balm," to name a few. This is bizarre on so many levels. Why would the Pillsbury Dough Boy be associated with lip balm? And why a "Peanut Butter Cup" flavor – a product that Pillsbury has never produced, to my knowledge – with a photo of a chocolate chip cookie on the packaging?
And then there were Kool-Aid brand baby bottles. Personally, I would not want a newborn sucking on a bottle from a brand known for its flavored beverages with a high sugar content.
How about LISTERINE brand toilet creams, (Trademark Reg. No. 0117884, registered in 1917, and expired in 1998). Maybe "toilet creams" was an old-fashioned way of saying "toiletry creams," but who wants to rub Listerine cream on their body?
Colgate launched "Colgate Kitchen Entrees," a line of frozen meals including dried chicken and crabmeat, in the 1980s, but marketers quickly learned that consumers preferred Colgate's toothpaste and oral hygiene products to their foray into frozen foods.
Hearst Communications believed their famous COSMOPOLITAN magazine would make a great yogurt, and even applied to register the COSMOPOLITAN trademark for ice cream, sorbet, frozen yogurt, hard candy, lollipops, and chocolate candy, amongst other foods (App. No. 86305176). The application never matured to registration, though, because Hearst did not file a Statement of Use.
The list of ill-conceived brand extensions goes on and on:
- Cadbury Instant Mashed Potatoes (chocolate flavored mashed potatoes?)
- Frito-Lay Lemonade
- Bic Underwear (is that flammable or flame-retardant? (Bic lighters) Or can you write on this underwear? (Bic pens) And I don't even want to think about a possible association between Bic razors and underwear.
When I was a novice trademark attorney, Kraft's CHEEZ WHIZ brand was enjoying a resurgence, possibly because of its association with Philly cheese steaks. A fellow lawyer told me that Kraft was looking for ways to expand upon this success and had come up with Cheez Whiz-infused hot dogs that, at one point, they suggested calling DOG WHIZ. Fortunately, this one never saw the light of day. And perhaps this was just an urban legend that I was too naïve to question.
And, while not a brand extension per se, every trademark lawyer has heard the story of the Chevy Nova that did not translate well in Spanish-speaking countries (No va = Does not go). A few other fun translation mix-ups:
- Clairol's "Mist Stick" curling iron in Germany was a disaster because "mist" in German is slang for "manure."
- Pepsi's slogan "Pepsi Brings You Back To Life" was translated into Chinese as "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From The Grave."
- Kentucky Fried Chicken's "Finger Lickin' Good" tagline was translated into Chinese as "Eat Your Fingers Off."
And, finally, back on the brand extension front, there once was "LEGENDARY HARLEY-DAVIDSON" brand perfume. What did that smell like?!
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