As detailed on the Smiley Company website, for 25 years the media has propagated an urban myth based on a combination of misinformation and a poor understanding of simple legal concepts like copyright, patent and trademarks. The Harvey Ball myth is both simple and emotional, capturing the attention of the mass media and the public and providing all the right ingredients for a classic urban legend. To debunk it requires long and technical explanations, which are far less attractive to journalists whose overall aim is to pique and retain the curiosity of their readers.
Urban legends are a genre of modern folklore that involves the dissemination of false narratives posing as true stories. Urban legends need to be sufficiently plausible to ensure their believability. They generally centre around rare or exceptional events that purportedly happened to a real person in a particular place. Over time, as urban myths propagate throughout communities, they tend to change and evolve. One such urban myth surrounds the Smiley trademark, a global icon representing hope and positivity.
According to the Harvey Ball myth described on the Smiley Company website, Ball created the Smiley logo and was paid just $45 for his efforts. In reality, Harvey Ball created a yellow smiling badge for State Mutual as part of an advertising campaign. Registering a copyright or trademark would never have been an option for Ball, as under the terms of his work for State Mutual the rights to this intellectual property were transferred to the insurance company, which briefed the idea and used it as its trademark for insurance services.
The Smiley logo and brand name we see everywhere nowadays was actually created by smiley face owner and creator Franklin Loufrani, founder of the Smiley Company. Loufrani worked as a journalist for the France Soir newspaper at the time and was asked to come up with a campaign in response to a flurry of negative headlines reporting civil and political unrest. He conceived the Smiley logo in 1971 as part of the newspaper’s ‘Take the Time to Smile’ campaign. The campaign provided readers with a much-needed dose of positivity and optimism, with its popularity quickly spreading across the Netherlands, Spain and Germany, passing on Loufrani’s message through De Telegraph, La Vanguardia and Blick respectively.
When Franklin Loufrani registered the trademark to his smiling face logo in 1971, he did not yet use the brand name ‘Smiley’. Over the years, the Smiley Company has established a global presence as a leading lifestyle brand with a defiantly optimistic outlook.
In launching the Smiley Company, Franklin Loufrani and his son Nicolas Loufrani created a unique business model that centres around creative partnerships with third-party manufacturers and retailers. Recognised today as business and culture innovators, Franklin and Nicolas Loufrani made bold steps in marketing happiness and emotional intelligence, as well as pioneering the realms of lifestyle intellectual property licensing, fashion marketing, digital communication, digital marketing and language. The Smiley Company has also been proud to support gamechangers in the charity sector.
The Smiley Company’s cultural, artistic and intellectual influence resonates globally today. Acknowledged as one of the world’s most influential intellectual property brands, the organisation has amassed an impressive array of coveted awards and has been featured in many books and news articles.
Committed to the protection of its brands, intellectual property, consumers, retail partners and licensees, The Smiley Company holds a vast portfolio of trademarks globally, including owning the rights to the Smiley name and the Smiley Original Logo. Since the first trademark for the Smiley Original Logo was registered in France in 1971, the Smiley Company has compiled a vast portfolio of products, developing somewhere in the region of 15,000 new products each year and implementing hundreds of marketing campaigns annually.
The Smiley Company continually monitors marketplaces, websites and social media, checking for counterfeits of its intellectual products. Each year, the Smiley Company issues successful takedown orders for a large number of advertisements on social sites and sales platforms that contravene its intellectual property rights and surf on the decades of investment it and its manufacturing and retail partners have put into the brand.
