27 April 2010

You don't have to be a kid to be bullied

I'm going to take a break from my regular schedule, my pretties, to have a bit of a rant on a subject I feel very strongly about: bullying. I was terribly bullied as a child, right through till when I left high school, and I even wrote about it on my long neglected other blog manikpixi. My favourite blogger Forever Amber recently wrote about a poor girl who received death threats because of her red hair, and if you scroll through the comments you'll see I put in my two cents worth on that too.

Bullying is horrible and it says more about the person doing the bullying than about the person being bullied. It says they're insecure and get off on hurting other people and generally not the sort of person you'd want to be friends with. But you know what really scares me? That the bullying doesn't stop when you leave school. You step out into the big wide world and realise that outside the confines of school (where hopefully there are rules and counsellors and ramifications) the bullying continues in every facet of life. Your colleague, your neighbour, your in-law - those insecure mean little people are still out there. And sometimes it's not individual people throwing their weight around but big firms, who not only don't have rules and counsellors to put them in their place, but actually have big budgets and lawyers which allow, nay encourage, their behaviour.

And it's this situation exactly that New Zealand company Oasis find themselves in. Oasis are a small company selling a range of natural skin care solutions, and they're on the receiving end of a trademark lawsuit from big New Zealand natural skin care company Living Nature who say that Oasis' logo is too close to that of Living Nature. Now I'll let you visit Oasis and Living Nature (I'm not going to link to them sorry, I'm too cross) to judge for yourself how similar the logos are. My opinion, in case you're interested, is: BULLS**T. In fact, if such tenuous similarities can be the basis for a lawsuit I would suggest perhaps the legal department of The Body Shop might want to look into suing Living Nature, because gosh-darn it if their logos aren't both, you know, circles.

I'll let you read the news article for more about the lawsuit, but the upshot of the situation for this consumer at least is that Living Nature have lost my business. I used to be a big supporter of their products, gift bags to overseas friends almost always included a Living Nature product or two but no more. In fact after reading the article I went straight to the Oasis website (who I'd previously never heard of), and ordered myself all four of these Synergy Fragrances, which are currently on sale for only NZ$7.50 a bottle.



TAKE THAT Living Nature - I'm voting with my credit card!

Peace out!

3 comments:

  1. I wholeheartedly agree about the bullying. I thought once you got to college people grew up, I guess not as I was bullied by a group of girls that I thought were my friends. In my opinion bullies need to grow up and find a new way to boost their obviously low self esteem. If they have to stoop as low as death glaring a person every time they see them (oh yes, it's totally fun to have a group of girls death stare you) they have serious problems that they need to get over.

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  2. I suffered merciless bullying when we moved to NZ, and it didn't stop until I learned to stop caring, but needless to say, it actually put me off NZ, which is sad because now that I don't live there I want to go back but would worry about kids. BUT of course bullying is everywhere, the case about Phoebe in Boston broke my heart, she was an Irish teen, mercilessly bullied, to an extreme I didn't thankfully get subjected to, and it killed her. I think bullying is disgusting, and you are not only voting with your credit card because living nature has lost my credit card too! I loved them when I was home, and would have bought more, but don't believe it now!

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  3. Interested to see how this goes.
    I was bullied mercilessly at school for being 'ugly' which is kind of funny because when I left school people often asked if I modelled. But I digress.

    I showed the logos to my husband and he said 'Fair enough on Living Nature's part, it's pretty similar.' but my response is 'How silly, you can't trademark a circle or a koru.' But maybe you can, Cadbury have trademarked their shade of purple.

    Anyway, I have tried Oasis products and they are DIVINE! I will continue to buy them and hope that they get the freedom to keep their logo. After all, the 'o' in their logo is reflective of Oasis. I think it works well.

    Oh and another thing, Living Nature are bringing huge brand awareness to Oasis for this. Actually they are doing Oasis a great favour putting this little brand on the map. Everyone loves an underdog. ;-)

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