I was reading the Wall Street Journal the other day and was astounded, well actually these days nothing surprises me anymore, that two toothpaste manufacturers are going to war over a graphic picture of a squirt of toothpaste.
Now I’m all about protecting intellectual property, I have plenty of copyrights and trademarks of my own, but this seems insane even to me, a professional marketer.
For the uninitiated, a NURDLE is the apparently correct name for the tiny little perfectly shaped glob of toothpaste shown on the box. In this picture the red, white and blue thingy.
nurdle
n. a grain, pellet, granule, or other small piece of a material, especially as part of a large quantity (such as foam kernels used as packing material); (in pronunciation-based spellings) a nodule; a quantity of a gel or semi-solid; a thing of unknown name (doodad, thingamajig, etc.). Also nerdle.
Don’t you feel smarter? Had you even noticed it before? The idea behind the NURDLE is that it both entices you with a perfect product picture and I’m guessing here that it also provides a visual instruction on how much to use and what it should look like as you squirt it onto your brush with such care…what ?
I don’t know about you but the last thing I care about is getting a precise size and shaped glob on my brush, a perfect pour of my favorite beer yes, toothpaste no. In fact in the article, a well known researcher identifies that most shoppers spend 1/20th to 1/100th of a second spotting ‘their’ product in the store aisle.
Apparently that brief segment of a shoppers life is worth millions in profit draining legal wrangling. Might I humbly suggest that coupons that drives sales might be a better use of these funds?
So as the fight for the NURDLE ensues what will that mean for us in this slow economy. Some attorneys will get richer, you and I still will still buy our favorite flavor or colored box, but we’ll potentially be paying more for it to cover the legal bills and the millions spent arguing over this that could have gone into product development. Now a better toothpaste , that I’d be interested in.
This is a common situation that many business owners find themselves in, fighting the wrong battle and squandering corporate resources. By all means stand up for yourself, but pick your battles better than this.
Bob Holdsworth is the founder of The Holdsworth Group. He is a successful entrepreneur and a marketing and business growth consultant who specializes in getting his clients and their businesses UN-stuck and back on track for success. If you want to learn how to “Do business on your own terms!®, you want to talk to Bob. He is also the author of several nationally published articles, a sought after speaker, a veteran paramedic, a very happily married husband, the dad of two awesome twin boys, a dangerous golfer, avid reader, and is severely allergic to neckties.
Bob can be reached at bob@holdsworth.com
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