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September 13, 2005
You say LEGO, we say LEGOS
Go to legos.com and you'll see this admonishment.
It seems the lawyers at LEGO are rather exacting in their expectations of how customers should address the High Holiness known as LEGO.
No one likes fighting with lawyers (except other lawyers) so it would be hard to imagine the marketing group at LEGO enthusiastically embracing this school-marm sternliness.
In the spirit of WOMMA's conference pitting word of mouth marketers against advertising execs, I look forward to a conference that pits marketers against lawyers.
[Hat tip: Craig Mason at Theatrefolk]
UPDATE: LEGO has since taken down this admonishment and changed the copy on the legos.com landing page to read as if it were written by real people (i.e., not lawyers : )
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Yeah, it's a bit silly alright, but, in fairness, "legos" is an over-the-pondism.
Here in the old world, we do tend to prefer "lego"...
Seems way too silly for me.
I'd rather not call them anything after that.
In fact, I'm noy ever going to mention them again. From this day forward, until they retract that silly admonishment, there will be no mention of Legos on any of our 11 blogs.
You'd think that they would have bigger thoughts to think about.
I guesss they don't subscribe to the Paris Hilton publicity scool of thought...it doesn't matter what they're talking about, as long as it's me.
I wonder if that's why on a recent (maybe a repeat?) episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition they kept referring to LEGO pieces they were using as little blocks - never actually saying LEGO. Which is unusal since they always mention every brand possible as a plug.
Continuing my world tour of comments about the Lego thing, this notice dates back to time immemorial. I remember seeing that admonishment in the 1970's. And I had the same reaction then as I did now: "Fat chance."
I think the notice is akin to shoveling against the tide. Even Federal Express gave in and became "FedEx".
Lego may never advertise that they make/sell "Legos", but I don't see the harm in the common use of the term. It would be worse, I think, if people called some other plastic bricks "Legos" when they weren't. Kind of like calling any tissues "Kleenex".
Imagine if Chevrolet starting telling people to stop using the term "Chevy".
Thankfully, most moms and dads (me excluded apparently!) are busy with other things in their life to even hear about such a ridiculous request.
Talk about out of touch with the real world.
Yes, this is crazy, this is annoying, lawyers suck in general....and yet, in this case, they are completely right.
As easy as it is to take a cheap shot against lawyers in this sort of thing and side with "marketers" (which is also where my own prejudices lie), here's why this sort of thing has to be done:
If they don't do it, the Lego corporation could lose all rights to the name Lego.
Because "Lego" is a trademark that describes a specific thing (in this case, "bricks or toys").
And if the trademark owner is not able to prove that they made every effort to police use of that trademark, they could very easily lose ownership of it (happens all the time).
Which means that I could go out and start making cheap plastic bricks and call them Legos.
And then the "marketers" at Lego wouldn't be marketing Legos ... they'd be marketing cheap plastic bricks just like me ... and not for long.
Lawyers do indeed have a lot to learn about marketers. But we marketers have a lot to learn about lawyers as well. They're not usually right, but sometimes they are, no matter how silly it might seem.
Lego my ego.
More dumb moves of going after people because of dumb trademark protection beliefs... this time it's humorist Garrison Keillor of all people. He's upset because someone is making fun of his show name. Oh, the irony. http://www.mnspeak.com/mnspeak/archive/post-733.cfm
Sorry to take so long to get to this one - I've blogged a bit about this here:
http://www.bricksonthebrain.com/blog/index.cfm?commentID=373
The reality is three things:
1. The copy sucks, and we've changed it to what it should have been all along. Check out www.legos.com for the update.
2. The reaction to the copy (as even shown in these comments) varied greatly from culture to culture. The Europeans, who don't tend to add the extra "s" to words like we do in the US didn't see much wrong with this. Additionally, the "lecture" tone that Americans picked up distinctly wasn't received in the same way in Europe. Nobody said global busines was easy :)
3. As mentioned earlier in the comments, there is a real and distinct trademark issue that we struggle with every day. The issue isn't Chevrolet vs. Chevy. It's copy machines vs. Xerox machines. It's tissue paper vs. Kleenex. It's soda vs. Coke. Over the years we've spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars to build a recognizable brand,and it's important to fight against losing our brand protection rights - which can absolutely happen if we're not careful. When any type of construction brick toy is a "lego" and people talk about all construction bricks as "legos", there is a real and significant problem for us. The key is not to stop trying to protect oursevles, it's to constantly try to balance the protection efforts with appropriate consumer interaction.
Hope this helps clear things up. Again, sorry about the delay in getting to this.
I think it has more to do with Mega Bloks vs Legos than anything else
Hmmm... and yet, their web address is legos.com - not lego.com or legobricksortoys.com? Wonder if they read their own "admonishments"? Do as I say, not as I do...
