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Keeping Up With Your Brand
By: Donna Ray Berkelhammer. This was posted Friday, January 14th, 2011
Loading ...The Kardashian Sisters (a trio of famous-for-being-famous celebrities) have been in the financial news lately, first for endorsing a “predatory” prepaid debit card and then being sued for $75 million for withdrawing their endorsement.
My business lawyer’s heart sank when I first read about the fees associated with the “Kardashian Kard.” While recent federal legislation has attempted to corral fees and abuses related to bank-issued credit cards, prepaid debit cards remain free in the wild wild west.
My first thought was that the Kardahians saddled their brand name onto a disreputable product. Was anyone really surprised when that bronco bucked them?
My second thought was utter disbelief that they didn’t have lawyers or business managers managing the details and their brand. I counsel my clients constantly on the legal aspects of trademarks, marketing and branding issues. This is the kind of problem that is 100% preventable with a good attorney in your stable.
If your name were attached to a product or service of any sort, wouldn’t you investigate the nature and quality of the product first? Especially if you were a celebrity brand that was essentially famous for no discernible reason? What else do you have but your reputation?
So, the moral of the day is a two-fer:
1. The devil is in the details; and
2. Read the contract before you sign it.
What’s the biggest mistake you would have made if you hadn’t actually read the fine print?
Tags: brand, brand management, branding, breach of contract, business advisors, CARD Act, celebrity endorsement, credit card, devil is in the details, endorse, endorsement, fine print, Kardashian Kard, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Khloe Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, mark, marketing, predatory financial practices, prepaid debit card, service mark, trademark, trademarks
When I was very young and just married, my wife and I put a contract on a house we were renting and applied for a loan to purchase. The kind of guy I was, I read the documents top to bottom. A few weeks before the closing, my wife lost her job. Having read the contract, I knew the lender required us to notify it about changes in income, which I did and they declined the loan, despite the seller’s expressed intention to force us to buy the house when we first explained we could no longer afford it.
Posted by: Russell Lawson | January 14th, 2011 at 11:56 am