| BNP faces legal action over Marmite jar in election broadcast
Simeon Goldstein, packagingnews.co.uk, 22 April 2010
Unilever has threatened the British National Party with legal action to block an online political broadcast that features a jar of its Marmite spread.
In a statement, the FMCG giant said that it was initiating injunction proceedings against the BNP to remove the Marmite jar from the broadcast and prevent the party from using it in future.
"We want to make it absolutely clear that Marmite did not give the BNP permission to use a pack shot of our product in their broadcast. Neither Marmite nor any other Unilever brand are aligned to any political party," the firm said.
In a blog entry on its website, the BNP referred to a spoof election campaign run by Unilever as a "disgraceful smear campaign" against the party.
The 'election', broadcast on the Marmite News Network website, plays on Marmite's "love it or hate it" slogan and features two parties ¨C the Love party and the Hate party.
The BNP said the Hate party was "clearly based on the BNP".
"Quite simply, if you start a spoof, you should expect to get spoofed," BNP leader Nick Griffin said. |
