Comments on: What Britney Spears Believes In?

By: Vivien

Vivien — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:17:15 +0000

ok, I’ve updated the post with the new details after reading the official press release from Elizabeth Arden. Its designers did design a very similar to mondonation logo, and after the negotiations between those two companies, they decided to join their forces and promote Britney’s perfume, while donating some proceeds to charity.

By: Vivien

Vivien — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:04:35 +0000

well, who knew that that’s how it would turn out. Looks like I’ll need to update the post - I guess all their discussions back and forth resulting in Mondonation signing a deal with Elizabeth Arden and promoting Britney Spears campaign. In the beginning, Mondonation’s Ward Bingham was assuring everyone their company has nothing to do with the perfume line.
well… I guess “money talks” indeed…

By: Naeem

Naeem — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:26:43 +0000

you guys, mondonation is a part of the believe perfume - they both have teemed up to make the perfume for charity.
check the official website: http://www.britneyspearsbelieve.com

it advertises mondonation and even links to mondonations t-shirt experiment.
the designers have worked years for elizabeth arden, they know what theyre doing.

By: Andy Havens

Andy Havens — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 12:44:30 +0000

Wow. Just in time for the chapter on trademark and copyright that I’m teaching as part of my history of advertising course… Thanks.

By: Vivien

Vivien — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 05:06:51 +0000

Andrew, I agree that it’s common to use lowercase letters in common, and highlight one or more letters, and pink-green combination is not that rare, but first of all - too many coincidences combined. Secondly it is possible that the copy of the existing brand wasn’t intentional - we all browse and see thousands of logos, brands, and some of them stay in our memory banks until at some point in time we dig them out without remembering where was it we’ve seen that logo, or perhaps it didn’t exist, but just looks familiar. So perhaps that was the case with Elizabeth Arden’s designers.
Thirdly, shouldn’t large design firms check whether their designs are indeed unique? Even I do that for my designs - making sure that I didn’t inadvertently copy someone’s logo. A simple search on Google for “believe logo” would’ve revealed Mondonation’s logo on the first page. It’s true that they have that logo in different colour combinations, and the current one is in green&pink.
In any cases, the question right now is what Elizabeth Arden is going to do about this now?

Chris, thanks for the report from your friend. I agree that it doesn’t affect Britney that much except the fact that even Elizabeth Arden’s designers didn’t find her worthy of their precious time and imagination to come up with a distinctive brand. As for those designers, I hope they’ll remember this lesson for the rest of their lives.

By: Chris Papadopoulos

Chris Papadopoulos — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:51:13 +0000

Vivien, my pal didn’t think it was a really big deal because of the reports that they’re working on a solution. Somebody will bend, some money might change hands, no really big deal other than a bit of embarrassment for whoever designed the logo.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 11:11:25 +0000

I am not convinced this is a rip off, purely because the idea of a lowercase word with a coloured letter in it is so basic that I would guess a significant proportion of the world’s designers have tried it out at some point.

Similarly the green and pink combination is not uncommon.

If anything I would suggest that they are guilty of uninspiring design but I don’t really see enough in this to be convinced of wrong-doing; although, that is not to say that they didn’t actually nick it. Who knows?

By: Vivien

Vivien — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 05:49:43 +0000

That’s just it, Joey - what was going through their minds? let’s use mondonation’s believe, and we’ll get some free advertisement all over the world?

kRiZ: Britney’s fragrance is planned to go on sale in October. I too believe it’s going to be another flop in Britney’s career. But I also hope that it would make Elizabeth Arden rethink their branding strategies.

Ronald, I think you can enforce trademark across borders. Mondonation became incorporated in 2005, but I’m unsure of their “believe” logo’s status. I don’t think Britney will get sued here, what does she know about design? Elizabeth Arden bears all the responsibility here.

Chris, could you please, let me know your friend’s reaction to this story? I too didn’t know much about mondonation before. I did see a few T-shirts and heard something about the believe campaign.

By: Chris Papadopoulos

Chris Papadopoulos — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:59:38 +0000

There is a saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I guess Mondonation is doing something right. They’ll hopefully get a bit more publicity out of this. (I certainly hadn’t heard of them before.)

Interesting story. I know somebody that is a very big Britney fan and I’m totally going to forward this to him to see his reaction. Sad to see how her life ended up and I hope she gets back on the right track soon. Seems like everything she’s involved in lately winds up bad.

By: Ronald Huereca

Ronald Huereca — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:41:56 +0000

This is an incredible theft. I wonder if you can enforce trademarks across International boundaries. I’m sure you can, since many companies are globalized (such as Coke, McDonalds).

I hope Britney Spears gets the pants sued off of her. Okay, bad pun.