Martha Stewart wants to trademark the name of her town, Katonah, New York, as the brand name for her furniture line. Trademarking town or city names is not a new idea. Yahoo! News cites examples as familiar to American consumers as Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Nantucket Nectars. Off the top of my head, I can think of examples like Niagra Spray Starch and Boston Market. From a business perspective, Martha Stewart wants to protect her products from selling fake Katonah furniture. Makes sense, but apparently not if you're a Katonah, New York resident.
Martha Stewart's Katonah neighbors held a rally to protest the trademark and one resident, Marc Black, even wrote a protest song that's making the rounds on YouTube (watch it below). The Katonah Village Improvement Society launched a campaign called "Nobody Owns Katonah" to further protest the trademarking of their town name, which was named after a 17th-century American Indian tribal chief.
It will be interesting to see which way this goes. For Martha Stewart, it adds up to more bad publicity. Bad PR doesn't seem to stop her though, so this will probably just be a bump in the road for her. It seems to be a much bigger issue for her neighbors.
What do you think? Should companies be allowed to trademark town names for products? What if those names are representative of an historic figure or revered person? Watch Marc Black's song performed live at the protest rally from YouTube below, then leave a comment and let MarketingBlurb readers know what you think.
Interesting! I wonder what will happen? She probably should have gotten some sort of feel for the local reaction of using the town's name. Now she's got a dilemma: she's put marketing effort into this product line and yet if she uses it she stirs up bad feelings.
Posted by: Laura | July 19, 2007 4:22 PM | Permalink to Comment