Ci Sense Blog

Does Your Competitor Still Have a Pulse?

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Is your competitor still ticking?

While glancing through recently filed trademarks, sometimes you’ll come across a trademark filing from your competitor who seems to have been dormant for awhile. Just seeing this indicates that they’re still alive and kicking (and have something in the works).

Of course, filing a trademark is not exactly a huge investment, and certainly some companies have filed a trademark and gone under shortly afterwards - but for the most part seeing a new filing indicates of a sign of life.

A sign you’d be wise to pick up on.

21 Bizarre Presidential Brands and Trademarks

Here at CI Sense, we like to keep an eye on how news stories impact the world of brands and trademarks. We recently used our Trademark Explorer to search for some new trademark filings associated with the American presidential candidates.

We hit quite a rich vein of bizarre filings. These are all legitimate applications to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Here are a few highlights, divided into actual products and odd slogans:

Weird Products

1. Mo’Bama- Apparently to be used for a ‘natural cosmetic skin care powder’. Is that anything like Mo’butter?
2. Barak? Oh Bummer! - To be used on bumper stickers and t-shirts. Clearly spelling is not their strong suit.
3. Bearack Obama - Allegedly to become a future teddy bear. We googled for some samples, but only found this eager ursine Democrat and this creepy blog.
4. Broccoli Obama - We wish we were kidding about this vegetable dish.
5. Obama Llama - Yep, that’d be a stuffed toy. And, of course, the unrelated theme song.
6. Obamanator - An ale from Denver’s Wynkoop Brewing Company. It’s already on the menu, apparently. Halfway through this campaign coverage you can hear about how they might have overdone the hop taste.
7. The Sock Obama - A plush toy. Use your imagination.
8. Palin Pink - Apparently going to be a lip gloss.
9. Palin Not Stalin - To go on shirts and hats. Maybe they filed this one before they knew how Governor Palin’s name was pronounced?
10. Hillary Magic - An air freshener spray, of all things.
11. 69 Reasons Why I Miss Bill Clinton - A ’series of books’. One reason per book, maybe?
12. Anyone But Hillary, 2008 - As you can imagine, there were a lot of variations on this for the bumper sticker and t-shirt crowd.
13. The Clinton Countdown Watch - This one harkens back all the way to 1994, but we wanted to include it because of the amusing description: “watches with a cartoon of President Clinton on the face which count down the number of days he has remaining in office”.

Bad Slogans

1. No Drama With Obama - That one ties for ‘most awful’ with ‘Obama is the Balm…Let’s Heal America’.
2. McCain for Capitalism, Obama for Socialism - To be used in electric and LED signs.
3. O.B.A.M.A. - Depending on which filing you like, this stands for “One Bonafide Achiever Making Change”, “Officially Bridging America Motivating Americans”" or “Our Best Chance for Managing America”.
4. Obama Ain’t Your Momma - More bumper stickers here. It’s unclear which side you’d be supporting if you put this on your Subaru.
5. Obama Bin Biden - Presumably this will be embossed on the back of Republican kaftans.
6. What the Hill-ary Thinking, Don’t Drop a Ticking O-Bama on U.S. Soil - I wish we were kidding about that one.
7. White Haired Dudes for McCain - There are other dudes who support McCain?
8. McCainianc! - That’s a bit creepy, don’t you think?

You can see the reports we generated for all the candidates over on Scribd. To learn more about how we did this research, check out CI Sense.

What Not to Make

Most of the time it’s important to know what your competitors are doing, so you can stay ahead of the game, and possibly be inspired.

But sometimes it’s just as critical to see what they are coming up with - so you can make sure too keep as far away from the concept as possible.

Some of my favorite outrageous (and entirely unappetizing creations) include:

• Dooey-Gooey cookies. It’s probably not as bad as it sounds, but still…
• Slime Balls and Gel Tubes. Get ready to eat snacks from a tube!
• Pur Flavor. Having flavored water come out your tap is simply wrong.
• Batter Blaster. If you don’t have the 3 minutes it takes to mix pancake batter yourself, you’re right: you clearly have more important things to be concerned about than breakfast.

Have you heard of any strange products? What odd items are you happy you didn’t think of?