Over the last couple of weeks, I have read two seperate instances regarding individuals “taking on” major corporations or institutions…and winning. What was interesting in both these cases is how online / social networking played an integral part of the success of the individuals. I will be spreading this over two posts.
# 1 - Jennifer Laycock (The Lactivist Website) vs. National Pork Board
Jennifer runs a site on the promotion of breastfeeding, and “milk banking”. She sells clothing with slogans such as “eat at moms” or “milk jugs”. It is a hobby site for her, and some of the proceeds of the site go to raise funds and awareness for milk banking. One of her shirts had the term “the other white milk”, which brought a legal C&D from the National Prok Board’s legal team.
WHY?
Because they have a trademark that states “the other white meat”. From my understanding, organizations that hold trademarks must aggressively defend their trademarks or they will lose them. Now, they could have sent an e-mail to her stating their position, and she would have probably removed the shirt from her product line (after all, she had sold only a couple of the shirts making her about 8 bucks in profit!). Instead they chose to send a very aggressively worded C&D letter with some derogatory comments included. I won’t even bother to try and figure out their confusion between breast milk and pork. Anyway, Jennifer happens to also have a “job” as a very well known author / editor for a Search Engine Marketing website. She has a powerful online network that includes top bloggers and website owners with powerful networks in their own right. What does she do? She calls on her network for help and support, and to get the word out about her situation. The network responds - in spades. Within 24 hours, there were literally hundreds of well known forums and blog sites discussing this “injustice”, and completely slamming the Pork Council at the same time.
What happened?
The National Pork Council responded (the CEO himself) with a personal letter to Jennifer apologizing for the situation. While not necessarily backing down on the claim to the trademark, he expressed concern over how the request (C&D) was handled. In a seperate letter from the Council’s legal team to Jennifer’s lawyer (side note - Jennifer had many offers for free legal council to help get this situation resolved - again a testimony to the power of the network), they mentioned that although the Council could not donate to her cause directly, the STAFF at the Pork Council were digging in their own pockets to raise funds for a non-profit milk bank that Jennifer supports.
Obviously, the National Pork Council had no idea the power behind this stay-at-home-mom with a “little hobby site” (tongue in cheek). Such is the case with the rise of blogging, online communities and forums, and online networking. The mass of power behind one individual is mind-blowing, but you would never know it from the first glance.
Congrats to Jennifer for standing up for her cause and her website, and kudos to the National Pork Council for the apology on how the situation was handled.
For further reading about this…Start of story…end of story
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