"Who Owns the Spot?" is one of the first questions I was asked by the attorney that we (my advertising client and I jointly) hired to research an unusual situation. It's not as cut-and-dried as one might suppose - as evidenced by the diversity of opinions posted here in response to the question.
You may find this story to be of interest.
In 2003, I created a commercial for my client, Keeney Bros. Music Centers, entitled "Dreaming." It ended with this hook: "Stop Dreaming. Start Playing." The spot generated quite a bit of buzz locally, motivating me to enter it into the 2004 Radio-Mercury Awards. It was the first time I'd ever entered any of my work in competition; to my surprise it ended up winning the the station-produced category, resulting in national exposure for the commercial and its slogan.
That commercial anchored the whole campaign, with subsequent commercials all ending with the same tagline: "Stop Dreaming. Start Playing."
After a year or so of running exclusively on my stations, the client sought permission to use the spot(s) on competing stations. Respectful of the time and talent invested in the creation of these commercials and not wanting to jeopardize in any way our profitable working relationship, we agreed on a modest licensing fee and made the commercials available to other stations on which the client wanted to run them.
Fast-forward to the summer of 2007. The client tells me that the Fender Instrument Company has "stolen" our slogan and is using it to sell their own guitar packages. We have no idea how this came about, but it seems unlikely that it was merely a coincidence.
Now this is flattering from one point of view: Fender. Using our slogan. Wow! But my client isn't a Fender dealer, and we're both thinking that this amounts to, well, taking our property - mine as the creator of the material and his as the advertiser - and using it without our consent. (Incidentally, by this time the phrase "Stop Dreaming. Start Playing" has been published on his website, printed on t-shirts, posters, used in print ads, etc., as Keeney Bros. Music Center's tagline or slogan.)
So, what should we do? Call Fender and ask them to stop? Maybe get them to pay us something for the use of our slogan? Would they even listen to us? Maybe we should hire an attorney instead, to contact them in our behalf....
Finally, we agreed to split the cost of hiring an attorney to investigate our claims and to draft a "cease-and-desist" letter to Fender. Long-story-short: we're told that because Fender is a huge billion-dollar global gorilla with formidable resources at its disposal, we're not in a position to take them to task.
So, we content ourselves knowing Fender thought our slogan worthy of their use and we move on.
More replies on this topic here: Friday Poll: Who Owns the Spot? (Part 2)
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