Sci Tech Watch

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Fan Organizes Global Movement Celebrating Nutella, So the Brand Sends Her a C&D Letter

Posted: 21 May 2013 06:00 AM PDT

Sara Rosso is definitely what you would call a ‘superfan’ for Nutella. So much so that in 2007, Rosso decided that the chocolate-hazlenut spread deserved its own holiday and created World Nutella Day. Over the past 6 years, the ‘holiday’ has grown into first a community for fellow Nutella fans, and now a movement celebrating the brand. The stated goal for creating the holiday was to “ encourage Nutella enthusiasts worldwide to enjoy and get creative with Nutella.” The event has its own Facebook page with 40K Likes, and a Twitter account with almost 7K followers. On the event’s website, fans have currently submitted over 700 recipes for Nutella, and the entire platform is obviously driving interest, fandom and sales for the brand.

And Nutella just told Rosso to shut the whole thing down. Last month, Rosso received a Cease and Desist letter from Ferrero, the parent company of the Nutella brand.

"They asked me to take down the site because they consider it to be an unauthorized use of their intellectual property and trademarks—the Nutella logo and brand," Rosso explains.

In Think Like a Rock Star, I devote an entire chapter to helping brands understand who their fans are, and what motivates them. No doubt, Ferrero looks at World Nutella Day, and likely sees little more than customers using its logo and likeness in an unauthorized manner. The company feels it needs to step in and protect its brand, and to be fair it has every right to do so.

But in acting this way, Ferrero is also communicating that it does not understand its own fans, and why they are driving this effort. A fan sees itself as the owner of a brand, in many ways the parent of that brand. As such, they want to see the brand grow and succeed. So they act in what they perceive to be the brand’s best interests.

Ferrero would likely counter that even so, the fan’s best interests for the brand might not be the same as what the brand wants for itself. This is why Ferrero should be working with its fans. Fans are special customers, they want a relationship with their favorite brand. Fans want the brand to step in and give them more instruction on how they can better serve and help that brand.

One of the case studies from the music industry I talk about in Think Like a Rock Star is the fan-run site TheDonnasMedia.com, which was created by fans of The Donnas. The site contains hundreds of thousands of hours of live concert footage from the band’s performances, and even custom made liner notes and photos so fans can literally create their own CDs of The Donnas’ concerts. The band found out about this site years ago, and instead of shutting it down, they contacted the fans running the site, and began working with them to make the site better. They understood that the point of the site from the fans’ perspective was to create new fans for The Donnas, so instead of sending a C&D letter to the site’s owners, the band instead began promoting the site to its fans! And for their part, the fans self-police the site, and won’t allow any material to be uploaded to the site that’s been commercially released by the band (remember what I said about fans acting in what they perceive to be the brand or in this case band’s best interests?).

If Ferrero would reach out to its fans that have organized World Nutella Day, they would no doubt find that Ms Rosso and her team would bend over backwards to accommodate any request from the brand, and would be thrilled that Nutella was reaching out to them. There is an obvious opportunity here for Nutella to work with Rosso and these fans, and create a huge platform for the brand’s fans that could create a significantly positive financial impact on the brand.

But instead, the brand is attempting to shut down the entire movement, and that has, shockingly, led to Nutella now receiving criticism from its own fans on its Facebook page:

“Today, i decided to remove Nutella and other Ferrero products from my grocery list because of the legal actions taken against the http://www.nutelladay.com/. Do whatever you want, but without my money.”

“Bad move Ferrero. Bad, bad move. I won’t be buying your delicious nut butter anymore. It’s a good thing there are plenty of alternatives!”

“We love Nutella, BUT after hearing how you treat your fans, we’ll be switching to an alternative brand.”

“I will never use your product again! You lost more than 1 fan today.”

Rosso has said she will be shutting down the site and all accounts associated with World Nutella Day on Friday. Now there’s still a chance Nutella could step in and say that they want to work with the fans, but the time to do that was before they issued a C&D letter, which is why they are now dealing with backlash from their own fans.

We will be discussing how brands should handle fan-run efforts like this tomorrow during #rockstarchat on Twitter at 1pm Central. But for now, here’s how a brand should respond when it discovers that a fan is running an effort that involves its brand.

1 – Contact the fan(s) first before pursuing legal action. Even if what the fans are doing is clearly against what you feel are the brand’s best interests, it still helps to contact the fans and communicate that to them directly. Normally, the fans will be thrilled to hear from you, and happy to incorporate any changes you request.

2 – Work with the fans to figure out how they can continue to have a relationship with your brand that benefits them, as well as you. Let’s assume that your fans are running a site that, for whatever reason, your brand decides needs to be shut down. Instead of simply sending lawyers out to the fans, contact the fans and carefully communicate to them why their effort is such a disconnect with what your brand is trying to accomplish, and communicate to them that you want to see if they can work with your brand in a different capacity. For example, by attempting to shut down World Nutella Day, Nutella has now alienated an army of literally thousands of fans. If the brand had reached out to these fans and figured out a way that they could keep working together, the fans would have loved it, and the effort would have become an even bigger platform to help the brand. Instead, it’s now become a PR headache for Nutella.

3 – See if there is an opportunity to bring the fan’s initiative under the brand’s umbrella. Instead of shutting down the effort, why not see if the fans would like to help you run it if your brand takes it over? I honestly suspect this is what will happen with World Nutella Day. There is enormous potential in this community, Nutella could easily morph this group into its own brand ambassador program, etc.

4 – Buy Think Like a Rock Star. It shows you exactly how to create a better relationship with such fans, and helps you understand them and how they are trying to help you brand.

If all else fails, you may need to pursue legal action against the fans running such initiatives, but it’s usually a good idea to first contact your fans, and voice your concerns to them. Typically, your fans will go out of their way to work with your brand because remember they are your fans.

If you are a fan of Nutella, what do you think about this story? Should Nutella be shutting down World Nutella Day, or is it a movement that can only help the brand? What do you think?

PS: Thanks to Lauri Rottmayer for the tip about this story.

Afterthought: If Nutella wanted to start today building a new fan community that was 40K strong like the one Rosso has already built (for free), what would be the costs and how much time would it take? I’m thinking about half a million, and remember Rosso has been doing this for 6 years. Whatever the cost, that’s the minimum amount Nutella would be throwing away by not trying to embrace this effort and bring it under the brand’s umbrella.

UPDATE: Nutella just posted on its Facebook page the following “Positive direct contact between Ferrero and Sara Rosso, owner of the non-official Nutella fan page World Nutella Day, has brought an end to the case. Ferrero would like to express to Sara Rosso its sincere gratitude for her passion for Nutella, gratitude which is extended to all fans of the World Nutella Day. The case arose from a routine brand defense procedure that was activated as a result of some misuse of the Nutella brand on the fan page. Ferrero is pleased to announce that today, after contacting Sara Rosso and finding together the appropriate solutions, it immediately stopped the previous action. Ferrero considers itself fortunate to have such devoted and loyal fans of its Nutella spread, like Sara Rosso.”

Kudos to Nutella for doing the right thing!

Papal Exorcism Mystery Deepens

Posted: 21 May 2013 11:11 PM PDT

AP: "Pope Francis' fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped "liberate" a Mexican man possessed by four different demons despite the Vatican's insistence that no such papal exorcism took place." Read more here.

Calibrating The Outrage-o-Meter

Posted: 21 May 2013 04:37 PM PDT

At the risk of stating the obvious, one big reason the James Rosen and AP controversies have become front page news is that "the news" is a key stakeholder in the story itself. Replace 'reporters from accredited outlets' with 'nihilistic hackers' or 'advocacy orgs' and the tone of the coverage we're reading, and questions we're hearing, would be much, much different. Instead reporters are, quite naturally, behaving in both their normal journalistic capacities here and in their ancillary roles as trade association members -- and so the whole thing has taken on much more valence with the press than we've come to expect when the DOJ is discovered taking liberties with its investigative powers.

That's something everyone should consider the next time we learn a non-media figure has been subjected to secret, invasive federal subpoenas, etc. Until then, I'd note that in this case the coverage disparity is due in part to the fact that -- to coin a recently misquoted White House official -- the reporting does not reflect all relevant equities.

Stepping out of my own reporting shoes, I'd say there's a wide spectrum between what reporters want -- something approaching privilege for sources who break the law to publicize protected materials -- and what many government secret-keepers might prefer -- to make it illegal for journalists to obtain classified info except in wholly passive ways, or perhaps even to make publishing classified information illegal altogether.

Ambiguous as it is, the actual law reflects neither preference. Nor should it. But as a natural consequence there's a lot of fighting now about whether it's been applied appropriately. For myself, I'd say that what officials did to James Rosen falls on the wrong side of where I'd draw the line. Of the million shades of grey here, one of them covers the vast and murky terrain between cajoling sources and actively facilitating lawbreaking. I think the burden on federal law enforcement officials to demonstrate the latter should be very high before they start accusing reporters of criminal behavior in court. And in this case, if I were setting the standard, I'd say they didn't meet it (though I don't set the standard, and a federal judge apparently disagrees with me).

If the burden isn't high, then the difference between elegant and sloppy tradecraft, or well-heeled and struggling media outlet, might well become the difference between journalistic triumph and jail time.

That's a big problem. It needs to be addressed. But I think it can be addressed without questioning anyone's motives or commitment to the First Amendment, or to national security, as the first orders of business.

First Divide, Then Conquer

Posted: 21 May 2013 04:03 PM PDT

At the end of the day, a big budget agreement that passes both the House and Senate is pretty unlikely. But before it can happen, there have to be negotiations, and before there are negotiations, Republicans have to allow themselves to negotiate.

In the Senate, what's holding that up is an effort on the part of the tea party backed members to block formal negotiations until Democrats agree that the debt limit will be off limits -- so that in the event the chambers do finalize a budget, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and other Republicans can still demand concessions in exchange for increasing the debt limit later this year. After four years of blistering Democrats for not passing a budget, this has an unwanted downside of making the party look terrible. And now Republican frustrations with Cruz's and Paul's tactics are bubbling to the surface.

This is like Christmas for Democrats. Watch the video in that post if you don't believe me.

Either Republicans kill the budget process and own all of the subsequent brinksmanship, particularly over the debt limit, or they have to discipline these freshmen and incur the wrath of the notoriously passive GOP base voters.

Thus the obvious course of action for Democrats is to do... nothing! Or rather, nothing other than to continue pressing for formal negotiations and letting this internal fight continue to play out in public until either one faction wins or the debt limit fight supersedes it.

In theory, Democrats could force the issue by introducing a legislative motion to appoint conferees. John McCain and Susan Collins' comments today suggest they'd have the votes for it. But it would also precipitate a vote-a-rama almost nobody in either party really wants to endure simply for the purposes of doing what should be automatic. And even if that weren't a problem, why should Democrats intervene to rescue the GOP from Cruz and Paul?

The Day In 100 Seconds

Posted: 21 May 2013 01:56 PM PDT

The conservatives on Fox got the hearings they were itching for in the IRS mess but none of the answers.

Full-size version.

Good Legal Advice

Posted: 21 May 2013 01:16 PM PDT

IRS official will plead the Fifth rather than testify to Congress tomorrow.

Inhofe Clarifies

Posted: 21 May 2013 11:10 AM PDT

Sen. Inhofe says Oklahoma relief won't be like Sandy because Sandy relief was a slush fund.

Oh Come On

Posted: 21 May 2013 09:01 AM PDT

At the risk of drawing more obloquy upon myself, I have to second the questions Jack Shafer raises in this piece just published by Reuters: What was James Rosen Thinking?

There are a few points that seem important to make about this story.

The first is that, as I said earlier today, you cross a big line when you go from investigating journalists to prosecute leakers to accusing journalists themselves of committing crimes by doing what is by any measure their jobs - trying to sleuth out as much information as possible in order to inform their readers. It's important to note that the DOJ didn't do that. Rosen wasn't charged with anything. He apparently didn't even know any of this had happened until the piece was published in the Washington Post over the weekend. But the government did walk up to the line by suggesting the theory that Rosen had himself committed a crime in order to get a warrant to examine his email.

Reporters and anyone who believes in the 1st Amendment is right to find this worrisome. But it's wrong to suggest that using a legal argument to get a warrant is the same as trying to charge Rosen with a crime. It's simply not the same.

The point that Shafer makes though is one that's been rattling around my head since I caught up on this story yesterday morning. Rosen may have been doing what national security reporters do as a matter of course. But I can practically guarantee you he went about it unlike most any national security reporter I know. I used to do a decent amount of national security reporting myself. And to protect your sources rather than yourself directly, there are basic things you do and don't do. One is you don't get into the details of exchanging classified information over the phone or over email.

Shafer says it better than I can ...

Rosen's journalistic technique, if the Post story is accurate, leaves much to be desired. He would have been less conspicuous had he walked into the State Department wearing a sandwich board lettered with his intentions to obtain classified information and then blasted an air horn to further alert authorities to his business. For example, one data point investigators used to connect Rosen with his alleged source, Kim, was the visitor's badge the reporter wore when calling on the State Department offices. According to security records, Rosen and his source left the building within one minute of each other and then returned only several minutes apart inside the half-hour. A few hours later that day (June 11, 2009), Rosen's secret-busting story was published.
Even teenagers practice better tradecraft than this when deceiving parents.

Shafer also notes the little noted fact that Rosen essentially burned a US intelligence asset (i.e., someone who was ratting out his country to the US) in a hostile foreign country, for no clear reason. It's doubtful that many other editors or publications would have published the piece at all.

As you can probably tell, I'm a bit conflicted about this whole episode. I've spent a decent amount of money over the last decade paying for pricey legal advice to keep myself and other TPM reporters out of trouble. So the issues raised here are ones I'm quite familiar with from personal experience and about which I've received a lot of professional advice. But the DOJ didn't indict anyone or seemingly make any effort to. They took a step I think they should not have taken. But they did so putting together a case against a government employee who more or less in plain sight (thanks to Rosen, in part) leaked what looks to have been highly classified information about US spy networks overseas. It's difficult for me not to be more shocked by the self-interested preening of fellow journalists over a comically inept reporter and source than the arguable dangers this episode holds for press freedoms. Indeed, I've tried and failed. I can't.

NRA Embraces Hollywood

Posted: 21 May 2013 08:13 AM PDT

Fresh off blaming Hollywood and the video gaming industry for extreme gun violence, the NRA is out with its top ten list of "coolest gun movies."

Can't Stop Watching

Posted: 21 May 2013 06:46 AM PDT

I lived in the Midwest for a decade, hunkering down in basements this time of year the way you do (or at least are supposed to do), but tornado videos never get old to me. Some of the most dramatic videos from yesterday's storm.

Medical Examiner Reduces Death Toll

Posted: 21 May 2013 06:44 AM PDT

The confirmed death toll in Oklahoma has been revised downward to 24.

All Bluff?

Posted: 21 May 2013 06:20 AM PDT

I think it's fair to say that Harry Reid isn't by inclination or temperament a big fan of filibuster reform. That's partly because it will upset whatever collegiality is left in the Senate and make it really hard for him to "run" the Senate. But he's not above keeping it in play as a negotiating chip with Mitch McConnell over important White House nominations. That's why Reid keeps raising the prospect of doing something on filibuster reform, after initially declaring the issue resolved with some minor rules changes in January. His threats make a lot more sense in that context, especially since it's not clear he has 51 Democrats on board for a dramatic rule change. But McConnell probably knows that, too, so at some point this posturing will lose his effectiveness, if it hasn't already.