Dueling Billboards Debate Wife's Hotness
Battle of the South Florida billboards heats up
By SHARON LAWSON
Updated 7:00 AM EST, Thu, Oct 29, 2009
The billboard catches the attention of drivers and truckers traveling on the highways. "YOUR WIFE IS HOT" -- BETTER GET YOUR A/C FIXED," it reads, in big bold letters.
A clever and sexy slogan developed in January by Air Around the Clock, an A/C and appliance service based in Broward County. But now the slogan is generating a lot of heat after its competitor, All Year Cooling, flipped the phrase this summer.
"YOUR WIFE IS NOT HOT! Because you called All Year Cooling to replace your A/C rather than the other guys," the competing billboard reads.
"It's quite upsetting", says Michael Lang, operations manager for Air Around the Clock. "We sent them a cease and desist order to stop, and they persisted so that's why we went ahead and filed the lawsuit."
Air Around the Clock, in a 28-page complaint, is accusing its competitor of trademark infringement and misrepresenting their services. The federal lawsuit also states that the advertisement is likely to cause confusion and deceive consumers as to the origin of the services.
"They have the same colors, the same graphics...our's are yellow and black, their's are yellow and black," Lang said. "You know, if they wanted to try and go about it in a different way, and not take our design maybe it would have been different, but they did."
Meredith Mendez, an attorney for All Year Cooling says her client put a clever spin on it.
"It's just fair competition and they're just mad we came up with a more clever slogan," Mendez said.
Although Air Around the Clock has a trademark registration, Mendez doesn't believe the complaint will hold up in court.
"Their state trademark registration was merely an afterthought and it was done right after we started using our billboards," she said.
"We have plenty of other competitors that compete in a fair manner, we just felt like they went about it in an unfair manner and if you want to come up with something, come up with your own ad campaign," Lang said.
It's a battle of the billboards that both sides plan to air-out in court.
First Published: Oct 28, 2009 10:14 PM EST
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