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Excesses in branding:
New York City wants exclusive rights to
naming the city "the world's second home."

Before some of these people who are looking for a second home show up, some people in New York are still looking for their first home.

Forget about branding New York City "the Big Apple." That's so yesterday. Now New York City has bigger ambitions. If the city's trademark attorneys get their way, New York will have exclusive rights to the slogan "the world's second home." And just to make sure that other cities get the message, the trademark application asks for exclusive rights to apply the slogan to over 200 items including parades, sunglasses, chair pads, beach sandals, and of course, temporary tattoos.

Just what New York needs: six billion people who feel they can drop in anytime.

It turns out that New York's 650-strong Law Department dropped the ball at some point and allowed the "Big Apple" to fall into the public domain. Apparently they have learned their lesson. According to Joseph Perello, the city's chief marketing officer (every city should have one), "We are working around the clock to develop a licensing program which protects the image and brand associated with New York City." In fact when the city applied for trademarks after 9/11 to protect the NYPD and NYFD from rampant exploitation, they found out that a Florida eatery had beaten them to it. The restaurant is called the New York Pizzeria and Delicatessen--NYPD. After negotiating with city lawyers, the restaurant agreed to confine its activities to the restaurant business.

What's next on the city's naming and branding agenda?

Rummaging through the city's storehouse of marketable intellectual property, city officials have decided to file trademarks on some other things they found lying around. Among them, the slogan "Made in New York," which could apply to New York Mayor Bloomberg's billions of dollars in personal assets. Also, the seal of the City of New York, which will be a real killer in the t-shirt market: it portrays a local Indian named Sinister, a Dutch sailor named Dexter, and includes a shield with a windmill and a beaver. The city is also threatening to trademark its prized taxi medallions, now going for over $200,000 apiece. The medallions--a license to operate a yellow cab in the city--are issued by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, the folks you call to complain that your cabbie a) is driving erratically; b) can't speak English; or c) doesn't have a clue how to get to Newark Airport.