Tuesday, January 22, 2008

SOS: Save our Scrabulous

According to MarketingVOX and others, Mattel and Hasbro's corporate lawyers gave Scrabulous the ol' cease and desist, threatening my new favorite way to clear my head and play with my friends (AKA waste time).

Came across Jake McKee's write up (click here) of the probable scenario that led to this brand foible, in his post "Confessions of a Scrabble Brand Manager." It was definitely a good laugh, but it's sadly, more than likely how this whole thing happened.

From a branding perspective, this is excellent audience engagement--Scrabulous has 600,000 daily users. Does Scrabble have that many? Before Scrabulous came around, pulling out a Scrabble board at a party or family gathering was the furthest thing from my mind. I would bet 18 to 25 year olds, that magic marketing age group, are now playing more Scrabble because of the copyright infringement.

So I feel compelled to ask: What is the point of a copyright (if protecting it does damage to the brand and sales)?

1 comment:

Jayvee said...

I saw that! We better hurry and finish out match :)