Publisher filed a lawsuit against Chrysler and BBDO Detroit

Last week, the publisher Chooseco LLC, specializing in children's literature, has filed a lawsuit against the automaker Daimler Chrysler, advertising agency BBDO Detroit, webstudio Organic Inc., and publishing company Marvel Entertainment. The reason for the differences was the slogan «Choose Your Adventure» (~ «Choose Your Adventure") of the advertising campaign of the new SUV Jeep Patriot.Po opinion Chooseco LLC, in the campaign were infringed publisher of a series of children's books called «Choose Your Own Adventure "(~" Choose Your Own Adventure »).

Extremely popular in the 80-90-ies of the book series of interactive books for children «Choose Your Own Adventure» came out for the first time in 1978. The peculiarity of these illustrated books was the fact that the reader can himself build development of the plot, which had several dozen endings. Since that time, it was issued a total of 185 books of various genres - from educational to children's version of "Star Wars" and some horror works. Total circulation was 250 million copies in 35 languages ​​published between 1978 and 1998. According to the degree of popularity among the generation whose identity holds and adolescence occurred in the eighties, Choose Your Own Adventure can be compared with such children and podrostkomymi journals published in the Soviet Union as "Murzilka", "Pioneer", "Young technician" and others. < br />
In early March, Chrysler launched a full-scale advertising campaign to promote the new Jeep Patriot. Among other things, it was designed promotional website «Choose Your Adventure», which tells the story of three friends who travel across the country on a new Jeep Patriot in search of treasure. Interactive technologies allow site visitors to join the search, directing the development of the history of their choice, and at the same time come up with the plot and the dialogues for the 28-page comic book. The resulting comic book planned to be published this spring in conjunction with the publishing house Marvel Comics. The first 100,000 members who have registered on the website will receive free copies of the comic book in the mail.

According to the Chooseco LLC, Daimler Chrysler deliberately uses the slogan, like the name of the book series, trying popastv audience of people between 20 and 30 years old, grew up on the books «Choose Your Own Adventure».

"Assignment by Chrysler brand Choose Your Own Adventure particularly painful for publishers because our books are just promoting interactive adventure and active lifestyle for teens and young people" - said the head of the publishing house Gilligan Shannon (Shannon Gilligan). According to a study commissioned by the publisher, brand awareness «Choose Your Own Adventure» among young people 25-35 years old, are the target audience Jeep Patriot, is 75%.

According to Gilligan, the brand has a immensely positive associations in this category of consumers. Campaign Jeep «violates the rights of publishers and is a misuse of the brand owned by him».

As a respondent in the lawsuit also mentioned BBDO Detroit, Organic Inc., and Marvel Entertainment Inc., to develop and maintain campaign automaker.

According to the press service of the employee DaimlerChrysler Jason Vaynesa, publisher claims related to the desire to earn money for a lawsuit. He added that, as a gesture of goodwill, DaimlerChrysler offered a post on its website a link leading to the site Chooseco LLC.

Meanwhile, Raymond Montgomery, author of most of the books and the founder Chooseco LLC, intends to re-release the entire series on DVD and in digital format - some of the books are available for download to your iPod. In addition, Montgomery plans to write a new interactive adventure for the current generation of adolescents and children.

Stepan Trifonov



via ds-online.ru