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For God, For Country, and For Sale
A university’s good name is a valuable asset—in more ways than one. Yale is in the midst of an aggressive campaign to affix its trademark to a carefully selected variety of products. The strategy is designed to earn money, but also to protect against brand-name abuse.
March 1999
by Bruce Fellman
Many Yale alumni exhibit such strong ties to the University that it seems a shame the attachment can’t be continued forever. In fact, some colleges have made a kind of everlasting devotion possible.
When graduates of Texas A&M pass on, they can be laid to rest in coffins tastefully decked out in maroon and white, the school colors, and bearing the university’s seal and logo. Nor are these Aggies the only alumni candidates for an eternal educational embrace; Ohio State grads can be Buckeyes forever in a similarly appointed—and officially licensed—casket. But while Yale graduates can in life surround themselves with a growing amount of University-sanctioned merchandise, they cannot go to their reward in an Old Blue box. At least, not in the foreseeable future.
“We’ve actually discussed the possibility of a coffin,” says Helen Kauder, an expert in international marketing whom the University hired in 1996 to direct its licensing program, “but we decided not to do it.”
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There’s gold in those sweatshirts.
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In higher education these days, the talk is not always about deconstruction or recombinant DNA, the history of art or high-energy physics. Welcome to the world of academic trademarks and trinkets, of brand names and, perhaps surprisingly, big business—a world that Yale, long a sideline player in the name game, has recently entered in a big way.
There are many reasons for the move, says Kauder, who, prior to joining the administration, worked for Citicorp, where she was responsible for developing new business in Asian markets. One of the most important, of course, is money. There’s gold in those sweatshirts, book bags, key rings, golf club covers, and everything else that carries the official trademarks of a university. In a typical collegiate licensing arrangement in the U.S., the licensee receives a royalty of 7.5 percent (the percentage in other countries ranges from 4 to 8 percent) of the wholesale price of each logo-bearing item sold. These add up: Last year, collegiate licensing fees brought in $2.5 billion, with such sports powerhouses as the University of Michigan, Notre Dame, and the University of North Carolina each reaping several million dollars.
To be sure, any extra income, which is often used for such endeavors as athletics and financial aid, is welcome, but students around the country are pushing universities to focus on more than the bottom line. Last month, as part of a nationwide protest, members of a Yale group called Students Against Sweatshops held a “knit-in” on the Beinecke Plaza to highlight their demand that the University should adopt a licensing code that specifically forbids the manufacturing of apparel and other goods in facilities in which workers are mistreated and don’t earn a living wage.
While earlier sit-ins at Duke, Georgetown, and the University of Wisconsin led to negotiations and the eventual acceptance of a code, Kauder and her Ivy League colleagues have not yet come to any agreement on the issue. But as the debate continues, there seems to be agreement that maximizing profits is not the primary objective in the collegiate licensing arena. “What we’re doing is part of an overall institutional strategy designed to promote Yale and create a greater awareness of the University,” says Kauder. “But frankly, the most important reason to do this is to protect the institution.”
To understand what Yale might need protection from, it is useful to consider the byzantine regulations that govern trademarks, a bit of history, and Harvard eggs. Under both U.S. law and the statutes of most foreign countries that govern trademark issues, goods and services are divided into categories. The first step in protecting the brand name is to register it in the appropriate place, but it turns out that registration, by itself, is not enough. “When it comes to trademarks, it’s very much a matter of use it or lose it,” says Kauder.
Such a situation was possible at Yale when Kauder arrived. “For years, this institution had been run by people who felt that there was no place for commerce and education to meet,” she notes. “There was a general sense that Yale was a trademark that should be protected, but there was also a notion that the University shouldn’t be profiting at the expense of its students.”
To address the latter concern, administrators in the 1970s made New Haven a “royalty-free zone,” a place where manufacturers would not have to pay licensing fees on the Yale-branded merchandise they were selling locally. Many companies felt that they didn’t have to register designs or submit artwork for review, and as a result, says Kauder, “the University lost control.”
The logo could have appeared on just about anything, and while the University never had to contend with Lux et Veritas condoms—Cornell was once approached to license a “Big Red Rubber” (administrators refused)—toilet seat covers, or other items of questionable taste, Yale was clearly vulnerable, says Kauder. The situation was even dicier overseas, for although most countries have trademark laws, differences in the regulations and in their enforcement, as well as a university’s simple failure to register its name and establish a pattern of use, have tempted some organizations to attempt to gain instant status by adopting an alias. Administrators do not consider such imitation a form of flattery.
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There are Harvard eggs in Korea (eating them is said to make you smarter).
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Harvard is probably the best-schooled in defense against trademark abuse, says Rick Calixto, the university’s trademark program administrator. “Overseas, the Harvard name is almost as famous as Coca-Cola, but it’s not nearly as well protected,” Calixto admits. And so there are Harvard eggs in Korea (eating them is said to make you smarter). Harvard cigarettes in India, an investment firm called Harvard Funds in the Czech Republic, and job security for attorneys retained by Harvard to dispense a steady stream of cease-and-desist letters. “If they don’t stop, we sue,” says Calixto. “We’ve become very serious about protecting our name and stopping this erosion of our rights around the world.”
The best defense is often a good offense. For example, most academic institutions have a presence in Category 25—clothing—but unlike the t-shirts, sweats, and other jock-chic fare that usually prevail in the stores, Harvard saw an unusual opportunity in Japan. The country had an appetite for traditional, “Ivy League’–styled menswear, and though Calixto admits that “we didn’t really want to be in the clothing business, we also didn’t want to risk having our name associated with bad-quality clothes or other obnoxious products.”
Thus was born a collection of suits, sportcoats, shoes, and other fashion accessories. The H-logo is not, to be sure, prominent, but however understated, the endeavor had, until the Japanese economy went into a tailspin a few years ago and sartorial tastes changed, netted the university as much as $600,000 in annual licensing fees.
The current figure is now half that, but this cautionary tale about the vagaries of the international marketplace does not dissuade players like Kauder, who plans to turn her Asian expertise and Yale’s similarly high name-recognition into winning deals, one of which—a joint Yale-Harvard licensing endeavor in upscale apparel and school supplies in Korea—has just gotten under way. “We’re talking to our alumni throughout Asia about other ideas we can pursue,” says Kauder.
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“We’re marketing to people who feel connected to Yale.”
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Unfortunately, another kind of pursuit has already become necessary. Given the University’s formidable presence in Category 41 (a curious amalgam that includes “services consisting of all forms of education of persons or training of animals”), no educational institution would dare call itself Yale—at least, not in the United States. “But there’s a Yale Design Academy in Korea, a Yale Education Society in Taiwan, and a Yale School in Venezuela,” notes Kauder. “We’re working with the judicial systems to rescind their 'right' to use our name.”
The University has also become more engaged on the home front. After the results of a study showed that students were not, in fact, receiving a discount because of the royalty-free policy, Yale ended it and reasserted its oversight rights for everything that wishes to carry the trademarks. Now, in addition to having to pay the 7.5-percent-of-wholesale licensing fee, manufacturers are first required to ante up $100 for a product review.
“We sometimes require changes, and we sometimes say no,” says Kauder, noting one that didn’t make the cut: a key chain made by a company called Imprinted Products that read, “My Kid and My Money Go to Yale.” (The company eventually lost its Yale license for marketing non-approved items.)
However, about 130 companies have been vetted and are in business—after they pay a $250 to $500 minimum annual royalty. “These are not huge numbers, even for a cottage industry,” says Kauder.
But not everybody agrees. Jack Kennedy, vice president and general manager of J. Press, explains that the clothier, which at one time defined the Yale look, decided to forgo becoming a licensee. “We only sell around 50 Law School and 50 Berkeley College ties, along with some schoolboy mufflers, a year,” says Kennedy. “That’s not enough to justify paying the fee.”
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“We’re producing a line of exquisite, Yale-inspired scarves and ties.”
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Kauder hopes to eventually work out a marketing agreement as she seeks to increase the variety of available licensed merchandise. “We’re always trying to nurture new endeavors and find efforts to nurture,” she says, pointing to a recently licensed line of Y-bearing dog paraphernalia—water bowls, leashes, and collars—produced by a small Massachusetts firm called Posh Paws. She is also excited about a “home-grown initiative” that is being coordinated by Pierson College associate master Madi Gandolfo, whose family in Como, Italy, is in the apparel business. “We’re in the process of producing a line of exquisite, Yale-inspired scarves and ties,” Kauder explains.
There are numerous projects in the works that make use of material in the various Yale collections. In concert with newly appointed University Printer John Gambell, Kauder is creating a line of posters and notecards that will mine the University’s trove of archival images and “celebrate Yale’s tradition of great design.” The Center for British Art has come out with jewelry inspired by paintings in its holdings, and the Peabody Museum of Natural History plans to develop a line of bedsheets adorned with dinosaurs. S. Roger Horchow '50, who is well-known for his upscale merchandise catalogue, is helping to craft plans to market furniture, textiles, and other home furnishings based on material in the Garvan furniture collection. And last month, Pangea, a company that markets the t-shirts and sweats of European universities, unveiled a collection of vintage—and pre-aged—caps and athleticwear based on uniforms worn by Yale and Harvard athletes of the 1930s and 1940s. “The Yale archives are tremendously valuable,” says Kauder.
But mining the past is not the only product development option. In becoming Yale’s director of athletics, Tom Beckett brought with him from Stanford a merchandising (to say nothing of a winning) tradition, and one of the most obvious results so far is the new bulldog logo that now appears on team uniforms, athletics department stationery, center ice at the hockey rink, and a plethora of products that, says Beckett, “spread the word about Yale.” The decision to replace the pipe-smoking, somewhat ironic version of Handsome Dan with the more fierce and stylized “Y-dog” designed by the Starter Corporation, a department corporate sponsor, has not been without controversy. One disgruntled alumnus likened the logo to a “Pez dispenser,” but Beckett defends it, if for no other reason, on the grounds of institutional cohesion. “We had 17 different logos, each a variation on the old bulldog,” he says. “I wanted the department to be speaking with one voice, and the new logo’s a part of that effort.”
All this talk about trademarks is part of a larger agenda as well. “I like to call what we’re doing marketing, not commercialism,” says Beckett. “For one thing, although there’s every reason to believe that in the long-term we’ll do as well as our peer institutions, this is definitely not a cash cow at the moment.”
Besides, the real payoff in any merchandising program is not what comes into the coffers, Beckett maintains. “I like the notion of a collective sense of pride, of belonging to the Yale community,” he says. “So we’re marketing to people who feel connected to Yale, as well as to those folks who are looking to connect, either because they have children interested in attending the school or because they’re trying to tap into the great traditions of the University both in sports and academics.”
These are aspects of the good name Yale is seeking to exploit and protect, and lest anyone doubt the seriousness of the endeavor, consider one of the most recent attempts to co-opt an element of University iconography. The image that greets visitors to Yale’s website depicts some of the original books donated by Elihu Yale; without anyone giving permission, this graphic started appearing on the website of the Aryan Nations, a controversial white supremacist group. Eternal vigilance, it seems, is the price of recognition.  |
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