My precious: digging into TVNZ and Vodafone’s One brand battle

Bodo Lang said TVNZ spent decades building its brand and would be concerned about any impact to it. (Image: Vodafone NZ/TVNZ)

Ben Moore

Fri, 13 Jan 2023

Although Lord of the Rings references are always trite here in Middle Earth, it’s hard to shy away from them when two teams are battling over One brand, each hoisting ring-like logos as their banner.Unlike fantasy fiction, there is no neat ’good and evil’ in the case of TVNZ v Vodafone New Zealand, just a milieu of trademark legalities, cultural cachet and corporate hopes.Bodo Lang, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Auckland, predicted that TVNZ would have concerns when the rebrand was first announced in...

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