Television commercial director and photographer Paul Papanek who, a few years ago, directed a couple of spec spots recently received several letters from Coke’s in-house and out-of-house legal councils informing him he used Coke’s logo without permission. His spots have been featured on his websites as well as on The Spec Spot and Boards Magazine. Each of the three letters Papanek received were increasingly threatening with the last one, dated August 15, informing him he must remove the spots from all the sites within 14 days or suffer nastier legal ramifications.
While Coke is well within their rights to protect their logo and brand, Papanek, writing in the WheresSpot Yahoo news group, wonders about the implications of Coke’s request. Papanek cites the common practice of directors and production companies producing spec spots to promote their businesses, build their freelance careers or to pitch new business and wonders how this might affect spec creative. We wonder if new businesses pitches and creative reels will now be required to have logos digitized out. The two spots in question can be seen here and here. Papanek has commented and posted Coke’s letters here.
