Apple Lawyers Shutting Down Iowa Bar’s iPod Mondays
Feb 9th, 2007 | By James Lewin | Category: Digital Music, iPods & Portable Media Players, Strange 
It looks like iPod Monday at Des Moines, Iowa’s The Lift bar may be coming to an end.
Apple wants The Lift to stop using the name “iPod Monday” to describe the bar’s weekly event in which patrons get together and share their musical tastes via their iPods.
“Please choose a name for your product that is consistent with Apple’s guidelines (that does not include iPod or any other Apple trademark or variation thereon),” reads a letter from Apple’s Pete Alcorn.
“I do this little thing called iPod Monday in a little bar in Des Moines, Iowa, that attracts 45 people at most,” he said The Lift’s Clint Curtis. “Why is this billion-dollar corporation worrying about iPod Monday?”
According to Curtis, he has only generated interest in Apple’s product. He said that a local Apple store told him has helped sell more iPods than any employee.”I’ve generated a lot of interest for iPods in Des Moines, but I haven’t received any compensation, not even a ‘This is a cool thing you are doing,’ until two years later, when I get a cease-and-desist order,” he said.
While this could be the end for iPod Mondays, it could be the marketing coup that Microsoft’s Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp needs.
Zune Mondays, anyone?
You would have thought that Apple would have welcomed the publicity that The Lift would bring them. Seems like an interesting concept that Apple could have used to their advantage or which could have been mutually beneficial to both Apple and The Lift. So much for the “happy social media sharing” image that Apple wants to portray… typical.
Podcast Junky
Apple you are making a big mistake here. Not so much in the big guy crushing the little guy, but in ‘brand awareness and FREE promotion. I was a TV Producer for FOX Sports in the late 90’s (I now have my own company) anyway I did Extreme Sport Events. One of the big series we did was the NISS Tour (National IN-Line Skate Sereis) the event went across the U.S and had 100,000’s spectators at the events and about a million viewers on TV. Well at the begining of the series around 1995, when describing the In-Skates and In-Line Skating we used the term “Roller Blades” or “Roller Blading” generically to describe the Skates or the action. Well back then, everubody used the term no one said I am going In-Line Skating, they said I am going out ‘Roller Blading’. Back then Roller Blade sales were un-matched, they were number one. Well we heard from thier lawyers, that ‘Roller Blade’ was a trade mark and to stop using the name to describe the sport. We did, and so did every other media rep, promoter, etc. We started calling the sport In-Line Skating. Well guess what, does anybody use the term Roller Blading anymore, No, and the Roller Blade company, ‘Are they still in business? People stopped buying Roller Blades and started buying ‘In-Line’ Skates. The point of this long drawn out post, is that if Apple keeps telling people to stop calling Mp3 Players ‘iPods’ even if they are or they are not and everyone in business, in the media, and other public forums ‘like a bar’ start calling iPods, Mp3 Players, even if they are iPods, then people just may begin to to think, that all they need is just an Mp3 player. It’s branding and it keeps the name of the product in the market place. As long as the guy is not making an Mp3 player and calling it an iPod. How stupid Apple, you guys are suppose to be cool and smart, what happend!
What an uncharacteristically dumb move by Apple. If I were Clint Curtis, I’d call up Microsoft and see if they’d be interested in Zune Day. Maybe even ask them for 100 Zunes to auction off for charity.
It is sad that this event must come to the end, but for all the information that has been going on with this please check out the offical site at http://www.ipodmonday.com. Please do so before Wednesday, since Clint Curtis will be bringing the site down.