Less Known facts about Moment Marketing and its legal effects on IPRs?

Less Known facts about Moment Marketing and its legal effects on IPRs?

Moment Marketing is a promotional technique brands use in the social media and digital advertising era. They insert themselves into trending moments, which are already generating tons of conversation, to realize some traction for themselves.

Metaphorically stating, it’s “catching on to the tails of a trend to undertake to piggyback a free ride” because the brands do not have to pay the celebrity or the person of the moment.

The reason moment marketing is frowned upon is that it can sometimes wrongly seem like the celebrity is endorsing the product, even though he isn’t.

Recently, the success of Indians at the Tokyo Olympics has presented brands with the perfect opportunity for moment marketing — raising the question of marketing ethics even if it is a party to the mood of celebration in an athlete’s moment of triumph.

According to media reports, Baseline Ventures, which represents PV Sindhu, is mulling legal action against brands and companies including Happydent maker Perfetti Van Melle, Vicks-maker P&G, Pan Bahar, and a few others for using her name and image in posts and adverts without her permission.

Tokyo Olympics has issued extensive regulations, titled “Brand Protection Guidelines”, on intellectual property rights. These regulations are quite strict on the intellectual property around the Olympics. Ambush marketing, where a brand tries to associate itself with an athlete doing no direct marketing or tries to convey to people in some form that it is associated with the athlete or Olympic emblems, may be an obvious violation of the trademark laws of the Olympics.

According to these guidelines, samples of ambush marketing include symbols and pictures like unauthorized use of the Olympic emblem and symbol; use of terms that bring back to the mind of the Games; use of Olympic terms and torch images; graphics that resemble the Olympic symbol; and unauthorized PR publications.

Further, they clearly state that no company or organization, except for the authorized partners, may engage in marketing activities and public relations activities using the names and images of the Olympic or Paralympic Games, albeit they are/were under a contract with the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games or the other organizations related to the Olympic or Paralympic Games.

Any violations of the guidelines are punishable by Japanese trademark law.
One of the most prominent brands that come to our mind when we discuss this form of marketing is Amul.

However, the form of marketing that Amul undertakes does not strictly fall within the ambit of Moment Marketing but is rather known as Topical Advertising- which is picking up a topic of current importance and giving it a twist with its own brand language of butter, taste, etc, without directly using the celebrity’s name.

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