Spam-maker Hormel Spends to Reclaim Name

An anonymous reader writes "Hormel, the company behind Spam (the meat product, not the unsolicited email), is launching an advertising campaign in Europe in an attempt to remind people it has been around a lot longer than offers of generic Viagra and fake Rolex watches. The BBC claims it will cost Hormel £2m."

Comments

"It's a meat!"

[plover]

Actually, Hormel has been pretty cool about this for many years. They have wanted to make it plain all along that lowercase "spam" was acceptable to them as a name for UCE, but uppercase "Spam" was reserved for their trademarked product. I personally think that was a well thought out decision made long ago with much foresight. Many companies made a rough time for themseleves by defending trademarks on the web in the earlier days, but Hormel has never been seen as the bad guy before.

I wonder if SpamArrest changes their name to spamArrest would Hormel drop their challenge?

It's a tough spot, though, because they've allowed some "dilution" of their name by not having defended it completely. I can't really blame them for wanting to shed the negative image of being associated with UCE, but I don't know what else they can do except give up their 60 year old name (usuall a really, really bad idea.)

Re:"It's a meat!"

[earlytime]

I agree,

If the anti-spam companies (espceially the ones with spam in their name) are smart, they'll voulnteer to put a disclaimer or reference to Hormel and SPAM on their websites. Clearly spam is a derivative of SPAM, and eventially Hormel will need to get ugly if the anti-UCE crowd is not active in clarifying that there are two different things called spam, one good and one bad.

On a side note, I don't like SPAM! but.. I for one welcome our new viking overlords.

Re:Just drop the product line!

[EvilBudMan]

--I can't imagine anything more vile than the so-called potted meat product that is Spam. It's the multiplicative zero element of food: you add Spam to any other dish and the whole thing tastes like Spam (as opposed to the multiplicative identity element of food, tofu, which when added to any dish takes on the flavor of the whole dish).--

You sir, have never heard of SOUSE meat.