Advertisement ::

Enlarge Cartoon

[Tuesday 14/08, date corrected]

Last week I read that the American Red Cross was being sued by Johnson & Johnson (J&J), and my first reaction was that this cannot be an intelligent move. My second was there must surely be more to this story than meets the eye. First reports were that J&J said it owned the Red Cross emblem, a red cross on a white background, which seemed surprising, and that the Red Cross was illegally letting others use it. Since then, the Red Cross has come back fighting.

In fact, J&J apparently does "own" it, reports Ad Age, and while the lawsuit still strikes me as a bad idea for J&J, at least the story is more complicated than it first appears. Clara Barton, the Florence Nightingale of the US, signed an agreement with the Red Cross in 1885 1985, eight years after J&J registered it, but the Red Cross says it had been using it (unregistered) 1881, which differs from what Ad Age says. Since 1905 no one except the American Red Cross – and J&J – has been able to use it.

But a lawsuit? This is all the more surprising since Johnson & Johnson has long been held up as a company that uses good marketing and PR sense. It makes Tylenol, long the most popular brand of paracetemol painkiller in the US. The saga of how it handled not one, but two cases of product tampering have become classic case studies. The company managed to take one of the biggest health scares in the second half of the 20th century in the US and turn it around in the company’s favour by pushing for tamper-proof, child-proof caps on drug bottles.

Now, however, Johnson & Johnson has taken the American Red Cross to court, saying mediation with the charity has failed. Both mention the money the Red Cross makes and the amount J&J gives to the Red Cross, which makes them sound like kids having a street squabble. The move has caused a spike in very negative J&J- says Ad Age. But the ad industry newspaper also quotes a branding expert as saying J&J did the right thing, that it had no choice, and he points out that 65-70% of the value of Fortune 500 companies today is in their intangible assets.  Read that: logo, marketing.

So one day your logo represents something positive, with kindness and caring woven into it. The next day you’re perceived to be less charitable and more money-grubbing. Whether or not you were really ever the first or really became the second, the logo represents your corporate behaviour as it is perceived. I think J&J might have to do more than a little polishing if it succeeds in holding onto that emblem, which frankly, I don’t think it should be allowed to do.

What the American debate seems to overlook is that the emblem is international, with each national organization responsible for ensuring that it is not misused in the national state in question. J&J has had an agreement with the American Red Cross. But the International Red Cross began to use the symbol in 1863 (icrc.PDF)

.

Lawyers might like to look at historical use issues but there is a very basic humanitarian issue here. The International Red Cross movement has enough trouble protecting its emblems around the world as it tries to help people. It works hard to eliminate confusion about them. Looking at the release of two South Korean hostages today thanks to ICRC arbitration, a real torch for peacemaking efforts in a messy world, I wonder why a company like J&J doesn’t put its energy and money into making noise about the extraordinary work a red cross represents on a global scale. What a golden opportunity to remind Americans that the Red Cross is something far bigger than an organization that helps children learn to swim (laudible as that is). And what a chance to show the world that J&J does more than just sell products to help the wounded.

This would have been a better PR move:  standing up and waving the flag for the Red Cross, saying "we’re big enough to give up what we thought was ours for a better cause." Maybe someone at J&J will realize it’s not too late to do that.

Blogs on the emblem dispute: Wall Street Journal law blog, slashdot

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.