In 1997, a dance music group called Aqua wrote, recorded and released a song called “Barbie Girl”, which became a big hit. The song was about Barbie dolls, and it was kinda fun and silly, with the lyrics mostly about playing with the doll, and a couple of fairly innocent innuendos included as well. So naturally, Mattel, infuriated with the free advertising and promotion they were receiving, promptly sued the band for increasing brand awareness for them. As a fairly common and useful legal strategy, the lawyers for Aqua’s record label countersued, and both cases were thrown out of court. Mattel was still angry about all the positive nostalgia for their products the song was generating, so they went to a higher and yet higher court with their case, until it was ultimately dismissed by the Supreme Court. And herein we find our marketing lesson for today.
So, when you sell a product, and someone releases a popular song that makes everyone think positively about your product:
DON’T: Sue them. That’s a good way to look like The Grinch. Bullying people with your lawyers is a really great way to generate bad press and screw up your public relations. You know, like when Sprout fired that Melanie girl for some harmless, innocent sketch comedy video she made in college. Look, even if the song insults your product, it still generates buzz about it and gets everyone talking and thinking about it. Plus, people who like things will always defend them from what they consider to be unfair attacks, so many people will do free word-of-mouth advertising for you, so long as your product isn’t some heinous thing everybody justifiably hates. And remember: being able to laugh at yourself and taking a joke well makes you look like a good sport. Trying to crush anyone who uses free speech about your product (especially when they say good things!) is always a losing strategy that makes you look like a dick. Seriously: even if you win the court case (actually, especially if you do), you lose the public relations campaign, and you just look like a jerk and a bully. It is said that no publicity is bad publicity, but when it’s essentially free advertising, I’d say it’s better publicity than trying to kill those giving you the free advertising. And when someone wants to give you free advertising, just let them!
DO: What they did when all their legal wranglings failed: license the song to use in your product’s advertising. But do it first, instead of suing the band: you may get it cheaper, and you may get such good relations with the band, they might do more songs about your products, which could end up helping both parties succeed to even greater levels of success. It’s kind of a no-brainer.
Here is an interesting NY Times blog about this story:
