Social media brings lots of intellectual property rights into question - or maybe better stated - contention. Marketers work long hours, have sleepless nights, and spend the combined GDP of several mid-size countries on getting customers to embrace their brands - indeed to meld the brand into our identities.
Marketers perhaps hope the outcome will be quiet recommendations at civilized cocktail parties or over hot dogs at the local football game; or the car / perfume / clothing we buy would be a stand-in to express to the world who we are.
Ooops - society (and technology) has changed just a tad, and "recommendations" are now public all over the social media landscape. And those brands marketers hoped would define our identity? Well now here we find ourselves standing in virtual spaces where we can express, create and define our identities and preferences in ways not possible in the real world, so how surprising is it that we want to define ourselves in some measure in terms of brand there - say, maybe even by becoming the brand?
Case in point. Virtually Blind, a new and quickly addicting blog by intellectual property attorney, Benjamin Duranske, has a commentary post on a Second Life store, Body Doubles. Body Doubles sells avatars and shapes that will make you do an in-world double-take: "was that Halle Barry that just flew by?" Body Doubles sells celebrity look-alike avatars.
Duranske says celebrities may have grounds to cry foul under the "right to publicity" body of law which has well-developed precedence for protecting a celebrity's right to their own image. But Body Doubles may claim that the likenesses have sufficient artistic interpretation to give them first amendment rights (under U.S. law). He notes a recent court case in which a painting of Tiger Woods was held to be protected under the first amendment as an artistic work. Are avatars any different?
This area of IP is far from settled, but it also points to brands needing to expand their thinking and maybe even legal definitions surrounding the use of brands based on some very new value propositions. If we engage in social media for brand influence and are asking customers to use their influence on our behalf – and at the same time are telling customers to incorporate our brand into their expression of identity, then perhaps we need to step back and find ways to measure the value of the influence - or even allow the use of a brand - in terms of return on influence and the new possiblities surrounding virtual identities and virtual expression.
Ask yourself when customers can embrace your brand to the point of becoming the brand in a virtual way, is that your marketing at work?
March 4, 2007
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