Posts Tagged: "advertising"

With the advent of augmented reality systems, unique opportunities exist for retail businesses. The ability to provide dynamic and layered advertisements can add a new dimension and effectiveness to attracting consumers to a brick-and-mortar retail location. However, a number of intellectual property pitfalls appear to be awaiting those retailers that utilize the emerging augmented reality platform to reach and attract customers. For instance, a retailer may find that they do not own the exclusive rights to display augmented reality content to customers despite the customers being physically present in their own store.

As a branding and marketing professional, I really enjoy seeing how advertising has evolved over the years. Gone are the days of boring, ho-hum advertising campaigns. With modern technology such as DVRs, consumers no longer have to sit through commercials, if they don’t want to. Through the widespread reach of the Internet and social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, not to mention the ever popular, highly anticipated and super expensive Super Bowl commercials, advertising campaigns have had to become more creative and fun to catch the attention of their target consumers. Now more than ever, I find that, not only are people not fast forwarding through commercials, but they are looking forward to when their favorites air, so they can share them with others. At least that’s how it is in the Quinn household! Quite some time ago, I wrote about The Most Notable, and Sometimes Creepy, Restaurant Mascots, Characters, and Personalities. So, this time I thought I’d focus on a different type of Brand Mascot, aka real people, and highlight the top five advertising personalities within the insurance service industry. Not only are these brand personalities played by real people, but they have story lines that are so funny and memorable that you often hear people talking about them with their friends. Again, I know we do in my family. So, without further ado, here are my choices for some of the most creative, memorable and often downright comedic insurance company brand personalities, both old and new.

In a recent letter, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to take action against makers of “detox teas” for engaging in “predatory” and misleading marketing tactics on social media platforms, targeting primarily young adults (and young women in particular). Taking aim at the Instagram idol Kim Kardashian, Senator Blumenthal pointed out that influencers earn up to “six figure sums” for a single social media post promoting detox tea products without any expectation that the endorsers personally use the products and expose themselves to the alleged health risks associated with the teas.    

A Final Rule issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on May 8 (the “Final Rule”) that requires direct-to-consumer (DTC) television advertisements for a prescription drug or biologic covered by the Medicare or Medicaid programs to disclose the product’s “list price,” will become effective on July 9, 2019. The Final Rule mandates price disclosures for any covered drug that is $35 or more for a one-month supply or the usual course of therapy, and includes a unique enforcement mechanism whereby CMS would rely for enforcement on private lawsuits filed pursuant to Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act. In a conference call with reporters, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex M. Azar II analogized the new requirement to mandatory price disclosures required for the automobile industry—despite the fact that cars are not reimbursed by the government, subject to co-pays, prescribed by third parties who function as gatekeepers, or subject to complex arrangements with prescription benefit managers (PBMs) and other healthcare providers. The strained analogy to automobile price disclosures reflects the legal complexities implicated by this requirement and the absence of relevant precedent.

It is no secret that the fortunes of Mountain View, CA-based tech conglomerate Alphabet Inc. are largely based upon the advertising revenues accrued through its subsidiary Google and its incredibly popular search engine. The company’s most recent earnings report for the third quarter of 2017 shows that, of the company’s $22.5 billion in revenues for the quarter, $19.8 billion came from Google advertising revenues. That’s nearly 90 percent of Google’s entire revenues for the third quarter; the rest comes from Google’s other revenues ($2.4 billion) and Alphabet’s Other Bets ($197 million). The name of the corporation may be Alphabet but that entity is nothing without Google and its advertising revenues.

Twitter®, Instagram®, Facebook®, Pinterest® and other social media websites and apps are great avenues for advertising and promotion of one’s business and brand. However, in using social media to promote one’s business, there are a number of pitfalls that one must avoid. Using social media in relation to a business is not the same as using social media for personal, non-commercial use… The issues with using someone else’s copyrights, right of publicity and trademark in social media to promote a business is that the business is arguably profiting off of someone else’s property that does not belong to them. That can and does create a significant amount of conflict. Profiting from another’s property is what separates the use of social media in business from just personal use.

Over the years, more and more companies have begun using Mascots (Characters and Personalities), some of which are real people, in addition to logos and company names to identify their brands. And given that there are so many different kinds of companies using Mascots, Characters, and Personalities, I’ve decided it would be fun to do a series on Brand Mascots that have become very popular and well known over the years starting with some of the best and ending with some of the creepiest (in my opinion) restaurant Mascots… One of my favorite Brand Mascots, not to mention highly clever campaigns of all time, is that of the Chick-fil-A Eat Mor Chikin®” Holstein Cows.

Businesses were recently given a harsh reminder about the effects of failing to obtain permissions when using photography for commercial purposes when a California woman sued Chipotle earlier this year for $2.2 billion. According to the complaint in the Chipotle case, in 2006, a photographer approached the plaintiff outside of a Chipotle restaurant and asked her to sign a consent form about some photographs taken inside the restaurant. The woman refused, but in 2014 and 2015, she found a photograph of herself edited into promotional materials placed on the walls of several Chipotle restaurants in California and Florida. This case serves as a reminder that any business that uses a person’s image for commercial purposes must first obtain that person’s consent.

In September 2014, a California woman named Linda Rubenstein sued Neiman Marcus over allegedly misleading price tags at their “Last Call” line of stores. In the case, Rubenstein alleged that the company misled consumers at its Last Call stores with prices tags that listed a cost “compared to” a fictitious higher price, designed to lure shoppers into thinking they are getting a deal. In December of 2014, U.S. District Judge S. James Otero dismissed Rubenstein’s suit with leave to amend, for failure to state a claim and failure to allege fraud with particularity. Just last week, her putative class action revived when a Ninth Circuit panel agreed that a lower court prematurely tossed her case.

The $41.4 million settlement ends a legal clash that had previously led to the largest damages award for corrective advertising ever. The jury verdict was entered in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (M.D. Fla.) and the settlement ends an appeal filed by U-Haul in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (11th Cir.).

The FTC filed a complaint against Warner Bros. for violating provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act by making payments to prominent members of YouTube for positive reviews of its video game without publicly disclosing those payments. The FTC focused on the activities of an advertising agency known as Plaid Social Labs which was contracted by Warner Bros. in 2014 to coordinate a YouTube influencer campaign which marketed Shadow of Mordor. The FTC complaint listed two counts against Warner Bros., specifically one count for false claims of independent reviews and another count for deceptive failure to disclose material connection between endorsers and sellers.

Facebook’s mobile advertising numbers were so good that its entire advertising revenue stream surged ahead 57 percent when compared with 2015’s first quarter, up from $3.31 billion to $5.2 billion. Advertising is the major chunk of Facebook’s revenues and the company’s $5.38 billion first quarter revenues were 50 percent greater than its revenues during 2015’s first quarter. It’s also interesting to note that Facebook has increased quarterly research and development expenditures to $1.34 billion in 2016’s first quarter, up from $1.06 billion during last year’s first quarter. Since the beginning of this year, Facebook has received 13 patent grants from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office related to advertising; the company has also had another 32 patent applications related to ads published so far this year. A look at the text cluster, made available through Innography’s patent portfolio analysis tools, shows readers that Facebook is designing ad services incorporating social graphs, targeting criteria and media content.