Italian firm bitter over TV program's portrayal of its coffee
a Ukrainian television station recently aired a comedy program that appeared to use the company’s logo in a practical joke involving awful coffee.
The president of the Italian-owned GeneralFirm said his company suffered financial losses after Ukrainian channel 1+1 showed the company’s coffee brand during an episode of “Hidden Camera,” a knockoff of the popular American program “Candid Camera.”
During the program, which aired in early February, a dozen people in a Kyiv cafe were offered a new brand of coffee. The filmmakers added vinegar, salt and pepper and asked the unwitting patrons to try it and give their opinions.
For a three-minute span, the coffee tasters were filmed spitting out the coffee, grimacing, laughing and complaining profusely about the product.
In the program, the new coffee was introduced as a fictitious brand called Amadeus. But the name and logo on the cups was that of GeneralFirm’s brand Buoncaffe, claimed Silvano Guglielmi, GeneralFirm’s president.
At the beginning and end of the show, an announcer warned that the program was a joke. But Guglielmi said that the message that came across was that Buoncaffe is not a normal product.
“This was open and impudent anti-advertising,” Guglielmi said. “Even a person who could not see well could see our logo on the cups.”
Not everyone who saw the program necessarily saw the beginning and the end of it, and some may not have understood that the show was a spoof, Guglielmi said.
Guglielmi supplies Buoncaffe to many Kyiv bars and cafes, and he claimed that he is already seeing losses.
“I talked to the directors [of these cafes and bars], and they told me that some people just refuse to drink this coffee when they see the cup,” Guglielmi said.
The show aired twice. When Guglielmi found out about it from his employees and friends, he immediately wrote off letters to 1+1, the Podil district prosecutor’s office, and to the Italian Embassy.
Several weeks later, a response was received from 1+1 signed by General Director Oleksandr Rodnyansky.
“We want to inform you that after analyzing the program ‘Hidden Camera,’ which was transmitted on 1+1 channel on Feb. 1, 2000, we found no evidence of anti-advertising,” the letter stated.
The letter went on to state that neither the image nor any other mention of Buoncaffe was identified in the program.
In a video of the program obtained by the Kyiv Post, it was clear that the cups sported a brown logo, but the Buoncaffe name was not identifiable. However, those familiar with the logo might recognize it.
Guglielmi said he will continue to press 1+1 for damages. He plans to appeal to the Italian Embassy with a request to highlight the situation in the Italian mass media.
“I will do it in order to protect foreign investors in Ukraine,” Guglielmi said. “Now I understand why many of them do not want to work in Ukraine.”
“GeneralFirm is a registered company in Ukraine. It pays all its taxes and respects Ukraine,” he continued. “The only thing I want is for Ukraine to respect my company.”
However, a representative of a local advertising firm, speaking unofficially, was skeptical about GeneralFirm’s chances of winning compensation. While the law on unfair advertising provides for compensation for financial losses due to unfair advertising, these provisions apply only to commercials. Ukrainian law does not contain any restrictions on mentioning a trademark in movies or TV programs without permission.
Meanwhile, Yury Khomenko, associate director for “Hidden Camera,” is unfazed by the complaint. He said that blasting a particular brand of coffee was not the program’s intention.
“The show was about terrible coffee,” Khomenko said. “What does anti-advertisement have to do with tasteless coffee?”
Khomenko said that he doesn’t even remember whether there were any logos on the cups.
The shooting took place at a cafe in the Borshchahivsky district of Kyiv.
“We got permission from the management to use this cafe,” Khomenko said. “The director himself was at the shooting, and we used the cups they had. We did not intend to show anything other than the reaction of people to unpalatable coffee.”
Euan McGuffie contributed to this story.
