Legal Department Edits Campaign Down to Company Logo
The latest marketing campaign from Plain Paper Creative hit a speed bump today following a review by their client’s legal department. The campaign, which initially consisted of several print ads, digital experiences, and a short online video, was edited down to a simple company logo.
“Honestly, I’m a little surprised because this wasn’t that complex of a campaign. We’ve had stuff shut down before, but we weren’t really trying to push the envelope for Big Ole Burger”, explained Tara Schmidt, Sr. Account Manager for Plain Paper. “Either way, they rejected our work and instead they’re just going to use their logo for advertising. No tagline, no copy, nothing. Just the logo. I guess it was a legal thing. Whatever man.”
The campaign was indeed rather straightforward. It included pictures of the food at Big Ole Burger with various simple, catchy phrases. Examples include “Eat at Big Ole Burger!”; “Big Ole Burger tastes great”; and “Try Big Ole Burger, you’ll be glad you did!”.
Creative Director Jenna Young offered some additional context. “Yeah, they told us to keep it simple because they have a pretty strict legal department, that was in the brief. Apparently last year they were acquired by some big German holding company, and they’ve been cracking down on their creative liberties a bit. We did about the most simple, uncontroversial thing we could think of.”
Young, who shared some of the work with Premium Jargon, seemed to be at a loss.
“It’s literally a series of staged photo of their food and a few lines that you might have seen in like, the fifties.”
In an email sent in response to Premium Jargon’s request for comment, the lawyers from Big Ole Burger’s holding company, Lebensmittel Für Dich zu Essen, stated:
“While there was a great deal of time and money spent on developing this campaign, we simply cannot risk being sued due to frivolous marketing language. For that reason we eliminated all fun, joy, or even remotely debatable language in the ad. ‘Eat at Big Ole Burger’ could be misconstrued as a command, which is unacceptable. Taste is subjective, and thusly we cannot claim that the product tastes great. Suggesting to potential customers that they’ll be glad they tried Big Ole Burger puts an extremely heavy legal burden on our corporation and, should the customer not be ‘glad’ they tried Big Ole Burger, open us up to a wide array of lawsuits.”
“Furthermore,” the message concluded, “everyone knows our food doesn’t look like that.”
