NEW YORK — Alison and Claire Egan gazed up at Barack Obama’s rugged, windswept image in Manhattan’s Times Square on Friday, snapping pictures of the giant billboard atop the Red Lobster restaurant.
The president looked pretty good in his casual cold-weather jacket, pronounced the tourists from Australia. But what, they wondered, was the leader of the free world doing modeling for an apparel ad? “I don’t think it helps his credibility as a politician,” said Claire.
Of course, Obama wasn’t moonlighting as a model. The Weatherproof outerwear company had purchased an Associated Press photo of the president at the Great Wall of China, in which, to their great fortune, he was wearing their jacket. Without his permission, they built an ad campaign around it.
On Friday, after being contacted by the White House, the company pledged to take down the billboard — in about two weeks, plenty of time to squeeze more attention out of it.
“We need time to create a new ad campaign,” said Freddie Stollmack, president of Weatherproof. “We can’t have an empty billboard.” In the meantime, he said, the ad campaign had been “absolutely” the right thing to do.
Legal experts say the incident shows that even though we all have the right to protect our image from unauthorized commercial use, for the president, it’s trickier than most to pursue that right. And probably counterproductive more often than not, given the attention it draws.
“The president probably has the narrowest ability of any of us to protect his image, because he’s the most public person,” says trademark lawyer and intellectual property expert Anthony Biller. “And even if legally he has a right to stop the purely commercial use of his image, does he create more harm by going after these people?”
The Weatherproof incident came just as the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals debuted a new anti-fur campaign featuring Michelle Obama and other celebrities, with ads in Washington’s Metro stations, magazines and on PETA’s website.
PETA says it didn’t ask for Obama’s consent because it knows she can’t give it.
The Weatherproof ad, with its “A Leader in Style” tag line, is particularly brazen — it does make the president look something like a jacket model. “I don’t think I’ve seen one that’s quite so bold,” said Biller, based in Cary, N.C.
But understandable, says advertising analyst Marian Salzman. “Look, the Obamas are more fashionable than anyone who’s been in the White House in years.”
