Can your brand use the term ‘Super Bowl’ on social media?
You can’t use ‘Super Bowl’ in a commercial message, and that could includes tweets and Facebook posts. Here’s what you need to know before the Big Game.
Super Bowl. Super Bowl. Super Bowl.
Man, that feels good.
As a manager of several brands’ social media presence, it’s a different story this week. As much as we’d like to tout the best Super Bowl party recipes or ask fans of our cereal brands to show us photos of their “super bowls” of cereal, we can’t do it.
That’s because the NFL, as most people are aware, has trademarked the phrase Super Bowl. Similarly, the terms “Olympics” and “March Madness” are protected by trademark.
Ken Basin, of the Los Angeles law firm Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger, explained to PR Daily that the First Amendment gives journalists wide latitude to use “Super Bowl,” but it’s a different story for companies.
“Brands that want to use the ‘Super Bowl’ mark in commerce are much more at risk of violating the NFL’s trademark rights,” he said.
But can a brand really not use the term Super Bowl in something so insignificant as a Facebook post or a tweet?
It depends on how brave you are, and the size of your legal budget, because the NFL has proved time and again that it will go after people for using “Super Bowl.”
Of course, there are grey areas
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