“Attacking a brand is like attacking a person.”
So, we can expect Taco Bell to become depressed, suffer anxiety, and need sleeping pills to get rest. Then it will sit up at night staring into the darkness, thinking, “Just a few more sleeping pills and all the pain will go away.” And now, now that it’s too late, we’ll regret the unkind things we said about Taco Bell’s meat content?
Not likely.
I find the idea of corporate personhood difficult to take seriously and then this thing comes along. We are supposed to attribute human like qualities to a brand? What’s the logical end of this? If I drop a bottle of Taco Bell sauce in the supermarket floor, can I be tried for assault? Will it need victim counseling?
Unfortunately and bizarrely, this is a serious matter. The company is staking out a claim that a brand can be defamed in the same sense as a human being. It may be attempting to set up this as a defense but more likely an opportunity for countersuite or future law suits.
Product defamation.
In a world in which the Supreme Court has just discovered that corporate personhood means unlimited political contributions, the idea of “brand” personhood be far behind?
Have you seen one of those web sites entitled (insert company name) sucks.com. How often do you imagine coporate executives and their attorneys are trying to figure out someway to shut them down and then shut down all criticism as illegal or at least something you can sue about?
This all sounds ridiculous, but this is an opening salvo in a new kind of law. It may work. It may not. But I do not think it’s going away.
Please read Chris MacDonald’s more academically nuanced piece on the same subject.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 