One of the first full-page ads in the April 2010 Print Magazine is for The Little Tree, the tree-shaped car freshener. What’s the message in the ad? “This is privately owned property.” The entire ad is apparently intended to threaten designers from using the registered tree image that is owned by an agency and/or designer. That’s it. Nothing else.

Apparently this isn’t the first time this ad has run. So either The Little Tree company, or perhaps the agency, is spending thousands upon thousands in print advertising to avoid taking trademark infringers to court.

Meanwhile, I have to wonder how much money other designers are making off this image in other uses (does it surpass court costs and legal fees?). But then, hey, someone should be making money on the image because this ad certainly doesn’t inspire me buy anything from The Little Tree company. In fact, it’s had quite the opposite affect.

To top it off, I went looking for more on this story, and Google’d this term: print magazine ad little-trees (hyphened because their website is www.little-trees.com).

The results? The Little Trees website didn’t come up in the first page’s results. Neither did Print Magazine’s website.

People who wrote blogs about the ad had better SEO than the two companies mentioned in the search term, meaning I found the people talking about the companies before I found the companies. And I’m sure that over time, this blog will do the same.

I also Google’d the name of the agency/designer listed as the trademark owner, and all I found were court cases, not a website showcasing the agency’s work.

This is the great disconnect. Some designers focused on art don’t think in business terms; their ego sometimes trumps these efforts. In this case, I think The Little Tree’s money would have been much better spent improving their SEO, retail space, and positive ad messaging that influences people like me to buy.  

While this is an extreme case of design going off-track, it serves as a simple reminder to continually evaluate the message you attach to your company, visual and otherwise.