More on Ghetto Style: FedEx Furniture Makes FedEx Furious!
Margaret: this guy made a whole city out of FedEx boxes - Doug Aitken's Plateau
Fiona: Oh good god, FedEx is making themselves look like 1) idiots and 2) an evil corporation. Smart move on their part.
me: FedEx furniture - interesting as art, but would you really want this stuff in your house?
FedEx is upset because this kid is stealing from them -- it's a legal issue -- but basically their hands are tied. They can't get too mad, or else they're just another big bad corporation. But FedEx gives customers the boxes (for free) so they can ship items, not so they can be a freeloader. Here's an interview, from a PR point of view, with someone from FedEx corporate communications: http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/2005/08/fedex-speaks.html
I wonder what AOL will do if someone actually use those millions of cd-roms they mail for anything else but get on the internet.
FedEx: Take a note from American Express. When the costume designer from "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" wore a dress made entirely of Amex Gold Cards to the Oscars, they ran out and bought it from her and put it in their archive. They didn't serve her with a cease-and-desist.
The guy seems more guilty of quirky taste than some kind of trademark violation.
It proabably costs him more to maintain his website than a trip to IKEA would...
Teo--
I think that sample is a truer case of the item fitting the target demographic... what Gold card vendor *wouldn't* want that kind of exposure to a global/luxe/Hollywood crowd? It's a real brand fit.
Maybe FedEx's reaction was overkill (but, as someone pointed out, Wired seems to paint it primarily that way...), but it is understandable, imho.
how could fed ex be upset, the let a fed ex plane crash in the movie castaway.
Patrick-- yeah but in "Castaway" he delivers the package at the end -- the ultimate corporate lackey.