First Chick-fil-A, now ConAgra Foods. In the advertisement above, a fad dieter finds her salvation in Healthy Choice’s new Greek Frozen Yogurt. “I used to hide a secret stash of kale in there,” says a tearful actress, indicating her yoga mat. “Now I use it to do yoga.”
But what is played merely for laughs isn’t so funny to Bo Muller-Moore. The artist behind the “Eat More Kale” logo is none too pleased about the kale cleanser’s T-shirt, which sports the very words that made him famous. Muller-Moore had nothing to do with the shirt, which uses a different font from his iconic bubble letters.
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Good thought.
“He wagers”?
Kale isn’t chikin’, neither is Bo Muller-Moore.
the very reason that Bo Muller-Moore was trying to get a patent on his T-shirt phrase is because of REAL Rip off artists in the T shirt world. Instead he got a lot of headaches from Chick…. et …. and they are still making knock offs of HIS t shirt design and making a profit. How fair is this? Support Bo, if you can and buy products directly from him. http://www.eatmorekale.com/
Behold the power of the lazy creative director that sold ConAgra this crappy idea!
Yeah. Because industrial “yogurt” is so much healthier.
Well, you don’t get parodied unless you’re big enough to matter. It’s true that this is a parody used in a commercial setting, but ultimately this is kind of a compliment to the true “Eat More Kale” shirts. It shows that the idea expressed on the T-shirt still has cultural currency, while at the same time perpetuating its clout, even with a different T-shirt design. Artists who object to Weird Al Yankovic covering their hit songs — and subsequently making a living selling his covers and/or concert tickets to his live shows — face a similar problem, I guess. Weird Al does it with far more grace, because he only releases his work with the original artists’ permission, so he makes sure in advance there’s no problem or bad feelings. (Legally, he could do whatever he wanted, but this would hurt his livelihood, in the long run. It’s also Just Not Nice.) The commercial is actually kind of funny, and attempts to win over people with humor. Though they’re not legally bound to do so, too bad the yogurt folks couldn’t have contacted Muller-Moore and asked for permission/rights to use the real design in a parodic way — seems like they didn’t even try this route, which is rather poor form. It could have been a win-win: I think if Muller-Moore _had_ been contacted and had given his permission, the yogurt commercial would have ended up jumping the shark. Instead of being about yogurt, it could have easily become, and maybe already is, a commercial for Eat More Kale shirts that parodies the yogurt lady and the product she supposedly prefers for dieting — a parody of fad diets in general. Sorry for the length here, but I guess this touched a nerve. Parody/mashup is a huge part of how our culture communicates now, and average people need to know how to handle its permutations gracefully & skillfully in order to keep up. (Widespread literacy in copyright law is important. Saying “this isn’t fair” doesn’t exactly cut it anymore.) This is particularly true for situations when parody is used by the marketing departments of huge multinational corporations trying to seem (or actually being) conversant with grassroots concepts or ideas — a reversal of how commercial parody normally works, where cultural currency is created by grassroots “real” people making fun & co-opting the messages of commercial entities trying to sell stuff. Muller-Moore now just needs to figure out a way to capitalize on the eyeballs seeing the greek yogurt commercial, in order to sell more of his shirts, and gather more support (moral & financial) for his suit with Chick-fil-A — a truly ridiculous situation. May the green, leafy David persevere against the breaded pseudo-poultry Goliath.
You can’t get a “patent” on a t-shirt phrase.
The kale guy actually thinks he ‘owns’ that phrase? Dude, you’re high. No one takes you seriously.