Ford, black Mustangs, and bloggers’ itchy trigger fingers
As I have watched the facts unfold surrounding the Black Mustang Club, I have taken a nostalgic journey back to my brief stint in the newspaper business before I made the transition to corporate communications. I imagine myself on the news desk, my manual Royal typewriter before me, as the phone rings.
The source on the phone is breathless. “Have I got a story for you,” he says. “Ford Motor Company’s lawyers have stomped all over the biggeset fans of one of their brands. The members of the Black Mustang Club have collected pictures of their own black Mustangs and they created a calendar with those pictures on CafePress, right? And Ford’s overzealous lawyers have issued a cease and desist.”
Fan-freaking-tastic. My day just got brighter. I’ve got a hot lead to follow. Based on the education I received while earning my journalism degree and my experience covering other stories, I know just what to do first:
Pick up the damn phone and call Ford.
Which is exactly what none of the bloggers covering this story did.
The story gained major traction when it appeared on BoingBoing, one of the tip-top A-list blogs. According to the BoingBoing post, Ford’s lawyers contacted CafePress to inform them that the photos on the calendar infringed on Ford trademarks. Lots of people opined about Ford’s evident cluelessness, although the story subtly changed—you get the impression reading many of the posts that Ford’s lawyers contacted the Black Mustang Club directly. The headlines certainly are inflammatory:
- How to lose customers and influence people
- Is Ford Really This Stupid?
- Ford Claims Ownership Of Your Pictures
- Ford: Photos Of Your Car Are Copyright Infringement
- Ford Motor Co. - Trademark Bully
- The Unbearable Idiocy of Brands: Ford Runs Over Its Fansumers
Fortunately, Ford appears to be a lot more social-media savvy than they get credit for, because somebody there was monitoring the situation and set the record straight in comments to several posts. That somebody, Whitney Drake with Ford Communications, commented on the Boing Boing post:
Ford did not send the Black Mustang Club a ???cease and desist??? letter telling them that they could not use images of their own cars in their calendar. The decision not to allow the calendars to be printed was made by Cafe Press, because we had gotten in touch with them in the past about trademark infringements on products they sold.
The Black Mustang Club, and any other Ford enthusiast club, are free to take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials as long as they don’t use Ford trademarks in products that will be sold.
I think it is great that the Black Mustang Club, and any other enthusiast club, would take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials.
I’m looking forward to purchasing a copy to hang in the garage next to my Mustang (even if mine isn’t black).
There has been some confusion expressed over Drake’s statement (which Neville and I discussed on today’s episode #311 of FIR). Doesn’t the trademark appear on the car and, therefore, in the photos used in the calendar? My interpretation (and this is strictly supposition on my part) is that Ford objects to someone uploading the Ford or Mustang logo to CafePress and selling coffee mugs bearing those marks. As I noted on the show, it’s hardly an infringement if a Mustang appears in a shot during a movie, even though the theater is charging for tickets to see the film.
But the real issue here is the state of readiness in the blogosphere to pounce on a story without checking the facts. And I’m not pointing a finger at any of the bloggers who jumped on this story. If I were working for a newspaper today, I would still call Ford. If I had opted to blog about this over the past couple days, I would not have. I’m as guilty as anyone else. (And thank goodness I passed on this story.)
I also don’t see much follow-up by the bloggers who did post. Drake’s comments appear on several blogs, but comments show up in few RSS feeds and a lot of people don’t scroll through that many comments. (Drake’s is comment number 83 on BoingBoing.) Professional journalists fess up to their errors (just take a look at the blog, “We Regret the Error,” if you need proof). There seems to be no similar obligation among many in the blogosphere.
Journalism is a dying profession thanks to citizen reporting in the blogosphere? Don’t make me laugh. Should organizations monitor what’s being said about them in the social media space? You bet your ass.
01/17/08 | 17 Comments | Ford, black Mustangs, and bloggers’ itchy trigger fingers