Registered trademarks are most bothersome

by Kate Merryweather, Melbourne website copywriter

Scrolling through Bloglovin recently, I stopped to read a post from a fashion blogger I admire. What I was reading was clearly a sponsored post, which is fine, a girl’s gotta make a living, amirite?

But this one thing really irritated me as I was reading.

Without bagging out this particular blogger, because she’s awesome, I’m going to replicate a paragraph of the copy and take out the identifying details.

I really enjoyed using InsertHairProductNameHere™. Its patented ImpressiveName™ technology made it really easy to use and my hair felt silky smooth for days afterwards. Using the InsertHairProductNameHere™ is great for busy gals on the go and the ImpressiveName™ really works.

The good people at HairProductame© clearly want readers to know that they own the copyright and trademark for HairProductName™ and for us to know that HairProductName® is a registered trademark.

But guess what, good people at HairProductName?

Readers don’t give a ©®ap if you own the trademark to your brand name. They just want to learn the secret of natural beachy waves without your palaver in the way.

The marketing team at HairProductName should know better than insisting that a poor innocent fashion blogger litter her entire post with such visual rubbish.

Every ™, © and ® is an optical eyesore to a reader— especially on a screen, and who reads anything in print these days? It stops the reader from enjoying the content and is generally super annoying, exasperating, bothersome, aggravating and maddening.

It makes me feel rather stabby and shouty with the good people at HairProductName.

So please, marketers, just don’t use the registered trademark, trademark or copyright symbols. At the least, use it ONCE in the copy.

And bloggers, please tell your marketing partners that littering your posts with this superscript nonsense is against your editorial policy.