The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered fruit juice company Liqui-Fruit to withdraw an advertising campaign for its blackberry fruit juice after the regulatory body upheld objections from the South African arm of mobile device company BlackBerry that the ads made misleading claims, exploited the brand’s goodwill, and imitated it.
The ads, some of which marketed a competition in which the company was giving away BlackBerry phones, also poke fun at — and mimic the branding of — three mobile operators, Vodacom, MTN and Cell C.
BlackBerry took exception to three Facebook banner ads and in-store and forecourt advertising at BP petrol stations that showed a Liqui-Fruit box with the word “BlackBerry” on the front and had various taglines imitating mobile operators’ slogans. For example, in an imitation of Cell C’s slogan, “The Power is in Your Hands”, one of the adverts reads: “The Juice is in Your Hands.”
BlackBerry said Liqui-Fruit did not have permission to use its branding, that it did so inconsistently across the ads, and that doing so implied that the smartphone company was somehow involved in the drinks company’s marketing.
Since March 2012, BlackBerry said it has spent “approximately R70m on advertising in South Africa alone” and that there can be “no doubt that BlackBerry is a well-known, highly exposed brand with which the consumer is familiar, and to which the consumer attaches certain standards of excellence”.
Responding, Liqui-Fruit said it might have been subject to BlackBerry’s brand style guidelines if it conducted the competition in conjunction with the company. However, because it bought the handsets to be used as prizes it didn’t have to.
The ASA dismissed BlackBerry’s claim that the “look and feel” of Liqui-Fruit’s ads was too close to that of BlackBerry’s own promotional materials and also found that Liqui-Fruit could not be prevented from using the word “blackberry” to describe its product given that’s what it is selling.
However, the authority did find that capitalising both B’s in the word “BlackBerry” constituted the infringement of a registered trademark.
“While it appears that it may be acceptable to use another party’s trademark in advertising for the purpose of identifying the product as a prize in a promotion, this does not give the relevant advertiser free reign to do with that trademark as it pleases,” the ASA ruling says.
Liqui-Fruit has been ordered to withdraw the offending advertising immediately and cannot reuse it in its current format. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media
