Marketing Logic

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In a situation that is very close to me, as a friend of mine, Jennifer Laycock, runs a pro-breastfeeding blog. As part of raising awareness of breastfeeding and promoting milk banks for premature babies, she sells shirts the proceeds are donated to these causes.

Well, one of her pro-breastfeeding shirts reads, “The Other White Milk.”

She received a Cease and Desist letter from the National Pork Board claiming copyright infringement on their slogan (Milk!?!) and threatened to sue her if she did not remove the offending shirt.

On the “have to see to believe” part, they claimed that she advocates breastfeeding after infancy, like she was promoting some sort of breastfeeding fetish site or something, which shows that the National Pork Board’s lawyers neglected to even see who is was they were ready to sue, or even what they stood for.

Check out Jennifer’s blog for updates and email addresses for the National pork Board, their lawyers and PR department, which I suspect loves the attention they are receiving from this situation. My friends, you are well on your way to being the pork-butt of many jokes.

The beauty, you see, is that Jennifer is a well-respected member of the search engine optimization community, she is the editor of Search Engine Guide and we work together developing viral marketing and word-of-mouth campaigns online.

This should be fun to watch . . .

Update:

12 hours after Jennifer’s original post, we have lost count of the blogs that have picked up her story. It has run through the SEO and online marketing industy, the Breastfeeding groups, and is now making it to law blogs. A Google News search for “pork” shows articles about this ranking #1, #4, and #7.

Awesome.

Update: Feb 02, 6:05 PM

There have been well over 250 blogs that we have been able to track linking to the original article. The audience has covered militant breasteeding moms, nudists, law students, tech blogs, and myspace blogs.

A blog search on Technorati for the term “The Lactvist” shows over 70 results in the last 24 hours.

Jennifer released a statement to KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa (the home base of the National Pork Board). The broadcast will be available after 5 PM CST.

The National Pork Board, and more importantly, the law firm of Faegre & Benson have been completely mum on the subject, despite the overwhelming tide of negative publicity that is covering the ‘net. Obviously, they haven’t read many books on blogging and dealing with bloggers (hint – get a copy of The ClueTrain Manifesto – NOW).

The first rule is to deal with it honestly and personally – not to “ride it out.” Just ask Trent Lott, Dan Rather & CBS, and The NYT & Jayson Blair what bloggers can do if left without comment.

Update: Feb 3, 2007 30 hours after the original post was made, some articles and blog entires have made it into the top 20 Google results for “National Pork Board”. In less than 2 full days, the story has made it to Information Week.

Interestingly, why should the National Pork Board pay for the mistakes of the anti-breastfeeding, crack legal staff at Faegre and Benson? Wasn’t it the lawyer there that started this? I wonder if these things have to be approved at any level, especially with the choice language, contradictory terms, and fuzzy legal standing?

Update: 3:17 PM, February 3, 3007

72 Hours after the initial post, The National Pork Board is in contact with Jennifer. They have issued a very sincere apology and are working towards a resolution. Fantastic. Their first move seems to be a very positive one, and they are taking steps to rectify the situation. No word from the legal team at Faegre and Benson, though . . . .

. . . and what about that crack legal team? Thoughts on a Blogstorm

Update  Feb 7, 2007:
In a very nice gesture on the part of the National Pork Board, they are taking up a VOLUNTARY collection to donate to the Columbus, Ohio milkbank that Jennifer supports.  It’s a long, legal story about why they can’t officially do it as an organization, but in my opinion, this smacks of real honesty and true heartfelt feelings towards making an unpleasant situtation better.

All the more, I still don’t think they were aware of this until the backfire started.  I think they are at the mercy of this lone lawyers’ actions in the matter, and they are doing the right thing to make up for that.

Kudos to the National Pork Board