Just another battle that a giant falls
The famous Swiss watchmaker decided to start a new campaign over its new wristwatch with contactless payment chip, using a new moto: Tick Different.
Guess who’s mad; Apple! The company complained officially against Swatch in Swiss court supporting that this moto is similar to their own, Think Different, that ran for the first time in the 1990s for its marketing campaigns. Specifically, the moto was used in its ads during the period of 1997 to 2002. There were rumors reporting the company to use this moto as a response to IBM’s Think ad campaign.
Swatch chief executive Nick Hayek supports that this moto is a big coincidence. In addition, he claims the moto to be originated by an old campaign of the company from the 1980s; “Always different, always new”.
This is not the first battle in the business battleground between Apple and Swatch. Swatch moved against Apple back to 2014, when Apple wanted to register the trademark of “iWatch” in the UK.
Swatch said the name “iWatch” was too similar to its own trademarks for the words ‘iSwatch’ and ‘Swatch’.
So, in 2015, Apple was forced to launch its first smartwatch with the name “Apple Watch” instead of “iWatch”.
The Swatch wins the game once again.
Swatch was granted trademark status for the phrase Tick Different in the US in 2015. It also has the trademark for the slogan in Switzerland.
Sorry Apple, you’ve lost.