Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Dilmah Update
For those of you following the Dilmah story, whereby it appears as if they borrowed an idea from my blog for their current advertising campaign, we are now deep in an exchange of emails, in which they haven't denied using an idea from my blog.
However they are dragging the chain in answering, claiming that head honcho, Merrill J Fernando has been and is still travelling until mid November, though he did manage the time to send a reply. I have repeated my offer, for their donation to a charity of my choice and that will be the end of the matter.
That couldn't be so hard for a company with a strong record of donating to charities and one that prides itself on being ethical in all its dealings.
However they are dragging the chain in answering, claiming that head honcho, Merrill J Fernando has been and is still travelling until mid November, though he did manage the time to send a reply. I have repeated my offer, for their donation to a charity of my choice and that will be the end of the matter.
That couldn't be so hard for a company with a strong record of donating to charities and one that prides itself on being ethical in all its dealings.
6 Comments:
I'm glad to hear that there's been *some* progress, hopefully they'll stop dragging their heels and just admit to the act and comply with your request.
Hi ellie, I'm not holding my breath on them admitting to anything, but if a charity here could benefit, that'd be great.
Neil, time to get over yourself mate. Let it go. Sometimes our ego gets in the way, and I'm sure you think Dilmah "stole" your idea and whatnot, but it sounds rather far fetched that they would nick something off a blog, seriously.
Hi Ben, Nice to know someone is reading the archives! Well I don't know if you read the first post about this subject where I laid the facts all out, but simply put Dilmah have never denied they did it in any email they sent me of which there were several, which is telling in itself.
You say Dilmah would hardly bother to copy from my blog, but I can tell you that it is a large problem with bloggers being copied all the time, text and photos. Most of the problems relate to scrapers stealing published works and putting them on their own blogs for advertising revenue, there are also examples of mainstream newspapers taking content from blogs without permission. I don't know what you do, but if you were a chef for instance how would you feel if someone took one of your own recipes and published it as there own? I'm guessing you would be upset - same thing goes for bloggers. If you have read a few blogs you would have noticed that most assert some form of copyright and with good reason.
My issue with Dilmah is more the ethical one. There is no doubt they came to my site, I have their IP address in my Statcounter several times, their advertising campaign came several months later. Interestingly, I haven't seen this current campaign since I complained. However, ideas are not protected by copyright, only photos and text. Sure, like all people I have an ego, it would have been nice to be acknowledged, but my ego isn't so big that I'm losing sleep over it.
Thanks for challenging me, it never hurts to look at yourself.
Hi :o) thought I'd add my comment...
I hate to say but I think you might be making more of this than is really necessary?
I remember Dilmah making comparisons to wine here in NZ years ago when they got our top Wine master Bob Campbell to do tastings of thier tea.
It's not a new concept at all, though I like the way you wrote that first article :o) well described.
Some press articles I've found from the Dilmah Watte Series of Tea make comparison to a number of wines, this article from an event in 2002 highlights this... http://www.watteseries.com/ttr_hubrecht.html
it starts "The Watte Teas were first launched in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on the 30th October 2002. Tasting the Watte Series with Merrill J. Fernando, Founder of Dilmah, was Hubrecht Duijker, voted 'Wine Communicator of the Year' and... " going on to make comparisons to various wines.
some more here though not sure of the date on these ones... http://www.watteseries.com/press_trade.html
Anyway just wanted to point this out... a quick google search is all it takes to see that comparisons of tea to wine have been made before.
Hope this helps in some way.
Jon :o)
Hi jon, since I directly challenged them, you would have thought they might have sent me the links you so kindly found. The dated link you sent me is copyright 2006, so that hasn't been up all that long. However I take your point that the comparison was made before, even if it was privately and is now public. For the record, I still drink Dilmah tea, it's a great cuppa.
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