The lawyers at Mars have just slapped a cease and desist order on the creators of an unauthorised website for Snickers. The site, created by digital agency Poke, allowed people to customise the Snickers logo. Not only have 80,000 people – who we have to assume are Snickers fans – visited the site, but it also provided a link to the official Snickers site.
Most marketers would be delighted with this type of consumer interaction with their brand. I can only assume that the lawyers in Mars, with their blinkered belief that intellectual properties need to be protected at all cost, are more powerful than the marketers when it comes to making decisions about brands. My advice to the Mars marketers? In the words of your brand spokesperson, “Get some nuts.”