Hey, That’s My Tagline!

Several of our clients within the past year have been surprised to learn that the strategic taglines and campaign themes we created for them were compelling and popular enough that competitors began using them, too!

So now what? While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, stealing your thunder is going a little too far. But there are lessons to be learned here.

The first institution in question had protected their tagline by registering it as a trademark of the university. About a year later they learned that another institution had started using the same tagline as a campaign headline. Since the phrase had been trademarked, the university attorney was equipped to send a cease-and-desist letter to the offending institution. The competitor demurred. Case closed.

Truth is, you can’t legally stop others from using your marketing idea. Headlines and taglines can’t be copyrighted, and a trademark protects only the execution of the tagline as it’s associated with your name, not the words or the idea themselves.

However, trademark establishes ownership. It plants a flag in the ground, and stamps a date on it. Most offending institutions, when alerted to a prior claim like this, wisely choose to drop their use without further ado.

Now consider a second case. This client launched their campaign using a consistent high-impact branding theme – they didn’t trademark it as a declared tagline, but simply used it is as a prominent recurring headline and guiding theme.

They learned a year later that a direct competitor had started using the same headline in their ad campaign. Which college owned the idea? From a marketing perspective, the key is “ownership” in the public perception.

One choice, for example, would have been to simply abandon the campaign theme to the competitor and create an alternative. Yet we advised the opposite.

Since this institution had a significant investment in the brand – months of intense research, consensus building, and a strategic rollout, a strong identity was already built around the branding concept. They owned the idea among internal stakeholders. We recommended that they quickly build robust opportunities for external audiences to see their decisive “ownership” of the phrase. Put it prominently on the Web, use it for SEO keywords and adwords, create banners, give it to faculty and recruiters as a primary talking point, use it as branded event theme, and in advertising. Connect themselves to it.

If a campaign theme is important to expressing your brand, it’s a matter of who best “walks the talk”? And when an institution establishes this level of ownership, competitors who use the same theme end up pretty much advertising for you. In short, while the idea may not be legally protected, “ownership” of the tagline and the essence behind it can carry the day.

But the real moral of the story is this: If a branding concept, tagline, or campaign theme is important in defining and supporting your brand promise and you would like to use it for several years or more, protect it through trademark as a strategic tagline. Internal legal counsel can do this for you.

It’s easy to check for prior trademark protection to see if any higher education institutions or large corporations have already laid claim to your phrase or idea. Just go to United States Patent and Trademark Office website or the Canadian Intellectual Property Office website and search for the phrase in question. If it’s not being used, pounce on it!