REALTOR® Magazine-Daily News-REALTORS® Not Amused by T-Mobile Commercial

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Daily Real Estate News | February 13, 2006 | REALTORS® Not Amused by T-Mobile Commercial Executives at T-Mobile may be chuckling over their latest TV campaign, featuring an actress playing a real estate practitioner who's being studied by lab workers as a “top talker.” But members of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® aren’t amused at the telephone company’s attempt at humor. The character, identified as a "MOTIVATED REALTOR," is clearly playing the part of a busy practitioner more concerned about saying what the client wants to hear than about the facts. The actress, in a series of rapid-fire calls, makes statements such as, “Any closet is a walk-in closet if you try hard enough,” “It’s a buyer’s market,” and “It is a seller’s market, baby.” In a Jan. 26 letter to T-Mobile, Marge Hudson. of Apple Realty & Auction Co., in Bristol, Tenn., called the commercial “highly offensive and derogatory” to real estate practitioners. “Need I remind you that REALTORS® also are purchasers of cell phones, and I would think that it would be a good marketing strategy to try to obtain our business instead of alienating us.” NAR officials say they’re also “deeply disturbed by T-Mobile’s use of an actress claiming to be a REALTOR® and engaging in unethical behavior.” In a letter to T-Mobile International, a subsidiary of the German company Deutsche Telekom, NAR attorneys demanded that the company alter the ad to eliminate improper use of the REALTOR® trademark. “The terms REALTOR®, REALTORS®, REALTOR-ASSOCIATE® and the REALTOR® block “R” logo are all federally registered collective membership marks owned by the National Association,” NAR attorneys said in a letter sent late last year. “Because the marks serve the special function of identifying members of the REALTOR® organization, the marks may never be used interchangeably with terms such as real estate agent/broker/salesperson or in any other context which suggests that a person who deals in real estate is a REALTOR® without regard to his or her membership in the local, state, and national associations. That is exactly how our mark is used in the new advertising campaign together with every unflattering stereotype associated with real estate salespeople.” T-Mobile has yet to reply to Hudson's letter, but in a Dec. 12 letter to NAR, T-Mobile officials said the company “respects the rights of third parties in their legitimate intellectual properties” but will not alter the commercial. — Stacey Moncrieff for REALTOR® Magazine Online