Lighten Up Buffett

According to this New York Post piece, Jimmy Buffett is suing the Six Flags amusement parks for copyright infringement. It seems that Six Flags has organized a Bugs Bunny fan club called the “Carrot Head Club” that is 10,000 members strong. The Post says…

But Six Flags rep Wendy Goldberg told us: “I’m not sure how the concept of children in foam carrot hats is going to be confused with significantly older Hawaiian shirt-wearing, margarita-swilling Parrotheads. Clearly imitation wasn’t what we had in mind!”

Well, I think you got the part about, “significantly older Hawaiian shirt-wearing, margarita-swilling Parrotheads”, on the money Wendy. But, when you say that you weren’t trying to imitate; hmmm, you probably were.

I’m not surprised that Buffett has the “Parrothead” name copyrighted. After all, it is the age of branding and diversified revenue streams are king. I wonder if the Grateful Dead organization thought to copyright the name “Deadheads”. Seems to me that they would have a stronger case against Buffet than he would against Six Flags.

It is common practice among songwriters to “borrow” ideas for their music from other sources. You know, you take a little riff and turn around and somehow try to make it your own. Neil Young even had a song called “Borrowed Tune”, in which he used the melody from the Stones “Sweet Lady Jane”.

I’m singin’ this borrowed tune
I took from the Rolling Stones,
Alone in this empty room
Too wasted to write my own.

It seems to me that Buffett has always “borrowed” pretty freely when it comes to his choice of musical stylings. You know the whole white-guy, psuedo Caribbean, neo, quasi reggae thing. The way he structured his hugely successful touring strategy was clearly based of how the Dead did it before him (so it’s not just the fan club name). His Margaritaville restaurant chain looks suspiciously like a bunch of troppo Hard Rock Cafe’s. I haven’t read his books so, I can’t really comment on them. I doubt that he is breaking new literary ground though.

The point is we aren’t looking to Jimmy Buffett for original ideas. We aren’t seeking innovation whenever we fire up the blender and strap on the flip flops. We are looking for a familiar brand of watered down, tropical flavored, booze soaked escapism and the fact that Jimmy Buffett is being unnecessarily protective of that brand, puts a taint on the whole thing. Like a looking at a ersatz, air brushed painting of a sunset accompanied by the foul odor of brackish water and rotting fish.

So, lighten up Jimmy Buffett and let the kiddies have their foam carrothead hats. And, what do you got against Bugs Bunny anyway? Bugs isn’t exactly in the limelight these days and he could benefit from a little derivative marketing, same as you have.