Everyone loves a funny television commercial.
Regardless of what it's advertising, humor holds people's attention.
This is doubly true when the subject matter is of your interest. So
a few years ago when Sony presented Kevin Butler as
their "Vice President of Awesome" and "Director of Rumor
Confirmation" among other made up titles, you were amused and enjoyed the
show. It's cool, we all were. He was the character
for Sony serving as the humorous mascot for the PlayStation 3, aimed squarely
at pulling in that crucial 18-35 demographic with what seems to work today -
pure ridiculousness. Exchanging "booms" with gamers and even
speaking at E3 2010, he blew stuff up, stole cars, and through a series of
other crazy antics at least got your attention for Sony.
The thing is that Sony ad campaign was pretty high profile,
and the character of Kevin Butler (actually played by an actor by the name of
Jerry Lamber) became an instantly recognizable figure on TV. I'm sure
you've all seen Lamber lately in Bridgestone's ad campaign for their tires,
donning a lab coat alongside Troy Aikman, telling a frustrated Deion Sanders to
"Giddy up now, D." On its own that's really not that big of a
deal - it's just another actor doing a gig. But another commercial
in that Bridgestone campaign featured Lamber playing Mario Kart on
a Nintendo Wii, which seemed to upset Sony a little bit. Playing a
competing product (especially since he was drilling Xbox and Nintendo earlier
on Sony's behalf) made Sony / SCEA do what any red-blooded American company
would do in October of last year.
Not only did they sue Jerry Lamber himself, but his company
- advertising film Wildcat Creek for breach of contract, as well as Bridgestone
for facilitating the whole thing. You see a pretty basic clause in these
sorts of agreements called a non-compete - think "thou shalt not shill for
a competitor" for some pre-agreed-to period of time. So when they
saw what they considered a Kevin Butler type character using the products of a
direct competitor, which he could have worked on while still under that
timeframe, they saw a problem. And even though Bridgestone said they weren't
breaking any rules because Lamber didn't have a speaking part, they pulled his
section of the commercial from air (I couldn't find a video version online with
him still in it, but that screengrab is still out there).
Sony's words from the lawsuit back in October talk about how
the Kevin Butler character is an iconic personality, some stuff about
misappropriation of their intellectual property and even went far enough to say
it would cause market confusion. Personally I don't know about that last
part but really once a lawyer gets rolling it's tough to stop them.
Well, EuroGamer reported today that Jerry Lamber had finally
settled with Sony on the lawsuit. He surrendered, admitting that his
appearance playing the Wii did in fact cause market confusion with video game
consumers, and that he did in fact violate his non-compete clause. The
settlement? I'm not sure about any kind of dollar figure, but Lamber has
agreed not to appear in any video game related
commercials for a period of 2 years, unless Sony approves of it. So if
you enjoyed his Kevin Butler-esque performances in the video game ad space,
you're going to have to go without until 2015. Kevin Butler is Sony
property. Sony's battle with Bridgestone on the other hand rages on in
the courtroom.
Might I suggest settling this with a nice game of Mario
Kart?
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