• Interflora sued M&S in 2009 for bidding on its trademark in the UK (when a user would search for Interflora in the UK, the M&S ad would appear).
• The High Court of Justice of Wales and England refers the questions to the ECJ
• 2010, the ECJ ruled that Google was not liable for trade mark infringement by selling the advertising service to rival companies.
• March 2011, ECJ‘ Niilo Jääskinen - the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) – advised for Marks & Spencer to be found liable for trade mark infringement by using ‘Interflora’ as a Google AdWord keyword.

Last week,  the ECJ ruled in favor of Interflora which needs to be applied by the High Court in the UK in order to appreciate M&S’ liability.

The ECJ said that trademark owners can stop companies using their brands as triggers for adverts for competing products if that use “substantially interferes with the proprietor’s use of its trademark to acquire or preserve a reputation capable of attracting consumers and retaining their loyalty”. The interference is yet to be defined though…

Interflora’s marketing director, Michael Barringer, says: “This judgment backs all the hard work and effort we have put in to defending the Interflora brand. People searching the internet for “Interflora” want “Interflora, the flower experts and no one else. Our brand stands for quality and service and together with our network of independent florists, we have spent the last 80 years building this reputation.”

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Marketers often forget about supporting their offline communication efforts with an online campaign. I am not talking about social media, viral marketing or buzz marketing campaigns… I mean a real added value Search Engine Marketing strategy based on Pay Per Click / Search Engine Advertising campaigns and SEO works!

The 2007 iProspect survey - based on 25 closed–ended questions to 2,322 individuals about their behaviors, attitudes, and preferences as they relate to games, digital imaging, portable devices, and service bundles – shows the following trends:

• Offline channels – television, radio, billboard, outdoor, sports and transportation advertising, etc – strongly influence online search users to run  queries on search engines, the search queries are based on brands, company name, products, service name, slogan that were communicated on in the offline channel message. Television and word of mouth are the main offline search influencers!
• Branded keywords strongly impact search queries vs. the non–branded keywords (company advertising, slogan, or “other”) – 68% vs. 18%. Company, Product and Service Names are the most used keyword types
• Most importantly, a third of the searches ran under the influence of an offline marketing campaign result into an online purchase!

Tactics as simple as displaying / announcing the company’s URL are the most effective.

More rare, though super effective, are offline campaigns that state “search keyword:  “Google adwords” — sending online users to search results pages where savvy marketers know searchers will find their company listing at the top of either or both the natural or paid search results.

Given the above facts, it is key for an effective communication campaign to plan a PPC campaign as a major online channel to fully capitalise on the potential volume of search queries. A dedicated fully optimised web page will also help such initiative… Especially if you plan yoru campaign around a made up keyword or keyphrase – allow for mispelling etc…

Last but not least, track your results as the campaign runs!

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