As first reported by CNN Money yesterday, and per U.S. Trademark Office filings, Occupy Wall Street, AKA Friends of Liberty Park, an unincorporated association located at 10 Spring Street, Suite 1, in New York, New York, filed for a federal trademark on the words “Occupy Wall Street.” (And, by the way, the trademark application says “No claim is made to the exclusive right to use ‘Wall Street’ apart from the mark as shown,” i.e. Occupy Wall Street. Gee, thanks.)

To search for the trademark application yourself just click here and enter “Occupy Wall Street” in the search box. When you do, you’ll see that there are two applications. One from the “movement,” whoever that actually may be, and one from what is apparently an unrelated party.

The movement, the Friends of Liberty Park, according to the CNN Money article filed the trademark application on October 24, 2011 at 3:54 PM while the other party filed on the same day at 6:41 PM (both Eastern time, I presume). The rule is that the first filer, generally, gets the trademark. Thus, the movement had the idea, first, to exploit the trademark. Exploitation = capitalism. Way to go, comrades.

And they’ll probably get the mark, too. Although, I’m not sure how a mark is awarded to an unincorporated entity (and I thought this was supposed to be a loose, “grassroots movement,” anyway), but we’ll let the lawyers sort that one out. Capitalism, yes. This is further evidenced by the fact that the trademark application says that the mark is to be used on periodicals, newsletters, gym bags, tote bags, t-shirts, sweatshirts, headgear, jackets for children, and in entertainment services. How chic. I can’t wait for the OWS logo to show up on bags at my gym, or to see it emblazoned on purses making their way up Park Avenue. All in all, this whole move seems like good old fashioned, naked, “I can’t wait to sell out,” American capitalism.

I wish them the best of luck in their merchandising efforts and since the ticker symbol “OWS” is available, I just hope that they’ll give me a shout before they go public.

In a Marketing Week UK article from a few weeks ago, entitled “Greenpeace Warns Olympic Chiefs Over BP Partnership,” Greenpeace was reported as making a brilliant marketing recommendation. The article stated:

“Greenpeace has warned London Olympic chiefs that the 2012 Games risk being ‘tarnished’ by their partnership with BP.”

BP was reported as being a primary sponsor of the London Olympic Games scheduled for 2012.

These people at Greenpeace must have stayed up late to come to that conclusion. Such brilliance. (Okay . . . sarcasm over.)

Come on, Greenpeace. Your organization is known as a bunch of savvy marketers. Making such overly obvious pronunciations such as this one just diminishes your status. Were you that low on press releases on the day this one went out?

However, the story did provide me a good laugh on a very hectic day. So . . . thanks for the levity!

According to the story, unorganized activist boycott actions have been taking place on Twitter with people announcing that, due to their take on the controversial new immigration law in Arizona, they would no longer be consuming Arizona Iced Tea. But Arizona Iced Tea is made in Brooklyn, New York, about 2500 miles away from Arizona.

Enough said here, but if you’d like a little more detail, then please check out the Vanity Fair article.

While relaxing the other day, I was thinking about general activist and NGO strategies. Yes, sorry. Sometimes I think about business even when I’m relaxing. Here’s the thought that came to mind after two shiraz.

Often activist or NGOs act at cross-purposes. For example:

A general objective of anti-consumerism groups is that they want people to consume less material goods so that reduced consumption has more positive effects on the environment. Less consumption, less production, less pollution, etc. Let’s not talk about the decreased economic development and a reduction in the standard of living. That’s a theme for a more serious post. Let’s just contrast this anti-consumerism objective against another popular advocacy group, consumerists.

Consumerist groups want, among other things, for credit card companies to cease “abusive” practices in terms of eliminating excessive interest rates and hidden fees. On this one, you don’t get a substantial argument from me, but again further discussion on this issue is better saved for a more serious post.

What I want to point out here today is if these two advocacy movements worked together they could reach mutually satisfactory goals. How?

Let’s say that consumerist groups left the credit card companies alone, leaving those companies to charge whatever the heck they liked, with excessive fees and hidden charges running rampant. What would happen then, if you follow basic economic theory, is that consumers would curtail their usage of credit cards. With less credit card usage, in the United States at least, there would likely be less consumption, giving the anti-consumerism folks a check mark in their victory column. QED.

But what would the consumerist folks get out of this? After all, if the consumerist folks dropped the credit card company haranguing, a major item on their overall activist agenda, then what would they do each day from 9 to 5? Would there suddenly be massive unemployment in the consumerist activist sector of the economy?

I don’t think so.

Such a strategic alliance between anti-consumerism advocates and consumerist advocates would also benefit the overall consumerist agenda. Consumerists aren’t solely about nailing credit card companies. Consumerists also seek to achieve better deals for consumers in all product and service areas. And the magic here, in this joint venture proposed, would be that consumers would get those better deals.

Now, of course those better deals wouldn’t be from the credit card companies. The consumerists are letting the credit card companies run around like lunatics just busted out of the asylum. Remember? No, those better deals for consumers would be offered from other companies where those credit cards would be used. Like retail stores.

Those better deals in stores, and other credit card accepting businesses, would be because of the decreased consumerism. Business would be flatlining. In the hope of covering costs and just breaking even, stores and other credit card accepting companies would offer out-of-this-world deals just to get customers in door.

Is this a crazy strategy?

Well, its success, of course,

Continue reading Activist Teamwork Scenario

Well, not today.

Today, think cute. Think warm and fuzzy, literally as well as figuratively. Think yarn.

I recently noticed an article entitled “The Anti-Corporate Gift Guide” on the blog Million Dollar Swim. “Anti-Corporate Gift Guide?” That’s a really cute and humorous approach to such a heavy concept. During the holiday season, how could I not read this one? I couldn’t. So I did.

This article uses as its theme for anti-corporatism the idea of making gifts to give or the idea of buying handmade articles. This post was written by a woman named Amelia, living in Montreal, and operating a “little yarn shop.” Amelia tells us that business was good two weekends ago and that she had many customers rushing into the shop for gift-making materials. I’m glad her shop was busy. I like to see any business do well.

She tells us that to “hold out against consumerism” she will be knitting all the gifts that she is giving this season. (Presumably using materials from her own shop.)

Moving on within this theme of anti-consumerism, Amelia then tells us that if she was to buy gifts this season rather than make them herself, she mentions and pictures about a half-dozen handmade gifts, made by other handcrafters, that she would purchase. You may go to her article here to see those pictures and read those descriptions if so inclined.

I suppose with regard to Amelia’s would-be purchase of handmade gifts in lieu of those found at any traditional store, or her preference to make gifts rather than submit to “consumerism,” and with regard to her customers who will be using her yarn as handmade “gift raw materials,” there will be some lost value-added to the economy, value-added that the Canadian government could have taxed. (Something they really like to do up there in the Great White North.) But, I don’t suppose that relatively infinitesimal amount of lost value-added will show up as any negative numbers in any economic report. Unless, of course, this trend continues. But it would seem, at least to my tastes, that such a trend isn’t likely to catch fire anytime soon.

Each to his own, as they say. I suppose some folks like this sort of product, but I’ll just say that gifts of this type aren’t my cup of tea. Perhaps others find them attractive, but I would bet that that segment of the market isn’t very large.

And if that segment is actually very small, then big business doesn’t have much to worry about from this kind of anti-corporate movement strategy. Yet, I must say that I find this approach to anti-corporatism refreshing, maybe even tongue-in-cheek, and certainly one possessing much more character than the approaches used by pugnacious

Continue reading The Warm and Fuzzy Side of the Anti-Corporate Movement

Bloggers, on both sides of the political spectrum, will finally be able to rehash and mash up votes with other media to get those votes to turn out they way they want them.  Votes mashed up with Google maps, and podcasts, and videos, and Flickr pix.  Ones-sided votes, over-sided votes, landslides, mandates; all these things will come to pass on many different blogs, all of them different and all with the same voting records.  Sort of like The Daily Show, but on a micro basis. This could be hysterical.  It could also be confusing.

Imagine a million blogs, many of them not satire or parody sites, suddenly getting in the business of trying to be funny.  Dipping an untrained toe into the waters of parody and satire.  Mashing and hashing and rewriting “history” with their own version of Senate votes.  And combine that with the slow, but sure, demise of the central “repositories of reality,” i.e. mainstream newspapers.  Then what might we have.  More people who are more confused than they already are?

This is going to be funny, or sad.  I’ll let you know which later.