Daily Archive for April 5th, 2007

Law Blog – WSJ.com : Coke v. Coke: The Lawyers
You’ve seen the commercials — the ones featuring a couple of fake Coke employees trying to convince some rube lawyer to bring a claim against Coke Zero for “infringing” upon Coca-Cola Classic’s “taste.” On the screen, we’re told the lawyer is legit, the victim of some strange practical joke-turned-marketing campaign.

And it’s all on camera, too. But lest you think Kline should be sent back to law school — where they teach that class about how it’s a bad idea to sue your own company for nonexistent intellectual property violations — remember not to believe everything you see on television, YouTube or even a Coke Web site.

The Law Blog was skeptical — we don’t run across a lot of practical jokes involving lawyers — until we read this piece in the Fulton County Daily Report. According to the story, the four lawyers used in the campaign are indeed all real: Michael J. Kline, a senior litigation counsel for intellectual property at Coke; fellow in-house lawyers Elizabeth Finn Johnson and James M. Koelemay Jr.; and Dalton, Ga., attorney Robert A. Cowan. YouTube clips of several commercials can be found along with the Daily Report story.
After Coke decided to run with the litigation theme, James Dudokovich, marketing counsel for Coke and one of those in on the joke, set about to convince six of Coke’s in-house attorneys and two outside lawyers to offer legal advice to a pair of brand managers who wanted to sue their own company.
The video clip involving Kline starts when one of the actors says, “So, do you think we as the Coke brand would have a case against the Coke Zero brand because they’ve infringed upon our taste?” There’s a long pause, while Kline suppresses a smile. “It’s a novel theory.”
Johnson’s reaction is no less funny. “You don’t have valid claim” she shouts.
“To be quite honest with you, these guys came across as very legitimate,” Kline says, recalling that the actors wore company ID badges. Though he later got suspicious, he says, “They were pretty good at selling a ludicrous proposition.”

The legal theme doesn’t stop with the video clips. The Coke Zero Web site offers surfers the opportunity to “Sue a Friend” for various forms of taste infringement, including ringtone theft and using the same pickup lines; it also offers a “Ruin This Man’s Day” button, by which viewers can electronically harass an image of an already harassed-looking lawyer as he drafts litigation that would force Coke Zero to “stop using real Coca-Cola taste.”

The goal of all this legal shtick: to revamp Coke Zero’s image. The drink has a new black label and is being marketed toward men in the 18- to 34-year-old age bracket — men who might not drink Diet Coke because a “diet” drink is perceived as feminine, but who could be attracted by the humorous marketing of the calorie-free Coke Zero.

Susan McDermott, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola North America, says that when the drink first launched, ads focused on selling a brand image and the drink’s “personality,” then began looking for a way to show that Coke Zero offered the taste of real Coke — without the calories. “As they looked at different ways to expand the campaign, they thought, maybe we should sue ourselves,” she says.