Affiliate Marketing Blog from UK Offer MediaWelcome to Kieron’s blog - the life and times of an Internet Marketeer

Have I broke John Lewis’ affiliate terms and conditions?

I received this email from TradeDoubler the other day…

Dear Affiliate,

Waitrose Wine Direct are offering a whopping 25% off all orders placed until Tuesday 20th November.

Don’t forget Waitrose Wine Direct is part of the johnlewis.com affiliate programme, which makes it even easier to pick up a banner and promote this amazing deal.

Thanks
George

Cool, I thought. A great consumer offer to feature on UKOffer.com. So I went and put up a really quick post about the offer here. It was then that I went back and read through the John Lewis terms and conditions:

Trademark Disclaimer for Organic Search - Restrictions in effect from 28 July 2004
Affiliates’ use of John Lewis’s Trade Marks must be limited to the creative and text supplied by John Lewis through TradeDoubler. Any other use is not permitted unless prior permission has been granted by John Lewis.

The John Lewis names or any confusingly similar names, such as (but not limited to) “johnlewis.com” or “John Lewis” must not be used:

- as ‘keywords’, ‘meta tags’, ‘alt tags’, or any other such device;
- more than 4 times per page in any part of a site’s HTML
- As part of the Uniform Resources Locator (URL), a path name, a directory name or an e-mail address
- in banner advertising or any other type of electronic advertising, that would, in the opinion of the Partnership, mislead the consumer to believe the site belongs to the Partnership
- For the purpose of diverting users to sites not owned by John Lewis or to give priority to sites not owned by John Lewis over johnlewis.com

The contents of John Lewis’s literature and all websites owned by John Lewis, including but not limited to John Lewis, are protected by the law relating to trademark and copyright. Affiliates must not directly or indirectly bid on the Word Mark ‘ John Lewis ‘ or derivatives or confusingly similar words

No Doorway pages to be built around searches for John Lewis

No Masked URL’s (Inc add to favourites buttons)

Must be able to navigate using the browsers back button

OK here are the bits I have a problem with:

Affiliates’ use of John Lewis’s Trade Marks must be limited to the creative and text supplied by John Lewis through TradeDoubler. Any other use is not permitted unless prior permission has been granted by John Lewis.

It looks like I’ve already broken this rule as I wrote my own text. I wrote “Save 25% at Waitrose Wine Direct before Tuesday 20th November 2007. No voucher codes are needed, this fantastic offer is available to everyone who visits the site, free standard delivery is also included.” So will my sales be declined because I wrote my own sales copy?

Here’s the next “rule” I have a problem with:

The John Lewis names or any confusingly similar names, such as (but not limited to) “johnlewis.com” or “John Lewis” must not be used:

- As part of the Uniform Resources Locator (URL), a path name, a directory name or an e-mail address

The full URL of my post at UKOffer.com is ukoffer.com/waitrose-wine-direct-save-25. As it has “Waitrose Wine Direct” (a John Lewis trademark) in the URL path does that mean its disallowed?

I completely understand that John Lewis is a global brand and as such must protect themselves online. BUT in my opinion they are going a bit over the top here. There are a few things that John Lewis need to understand and appreciate if they are going to embrace Affiliate Marketing as a sales channel.

1. If you are going to have an affiliate program then by definition affiliates are going to write about and promote you on their websites. Affiliate websites, like all websites get crawled by search engines and therefore they will appear in the search results.

2. In order to effectively promote the John Lewis affiliate program then affiliates are going to have to use the trademark term “John Lewis” in their marketing/sales copy and also in their page URL’s.

3. Add together point 1 and point 2 and the end result is that affiliate sites will rank in the search engine results for search terms like “John Lewis” and variations.

4. Trying to stop point 3 happening is impossible, if you don’t want point 3 to happen then close your affiliate program.

To try and stop affiliates from gaining ranking in the search engines by not using the term “John Lewis” more than 4 times is a bit too controlling if you ask me. And to ban affiliates from using “John Lewis” in the URL is just ridiculous. Especially if you use WordPress which automatically turns the title of your post into the URL. If I was to follow the terms and conditions to the letter then instead of the title:

Waitrose Wine Direct - Save 25%

I would have to use the title:

Well known online wine retailer - Save 25%

How ridiculous does that look?!

And as for the “Affiliates’ use of John Lewis’s Trade Marks must be limited to the creative and text supplied by John Lewis through TradeDoubler” rule, well that’s really silly.

First of all, there is no “official” text available to promote the 25% off wine offer. Secondly, even if there was then that would mean that ALL affiliates will have exactly the same text displayed on their site. And as everyone knows this is not good and the search engines can penalise you, and no affiliate wants that. Finally, we affiliates are a very creative bunch, so don’t try to stifle us! Instead encourage us to actively promote your program in new and creative ways, you will get so much more from us if you take this approach rather than trying to bury us under excessive terms and conditions.

So does my post at UKOffer fall foul of John Lewis’s terms and conditions? Are they over-the-top or acceptable?

P.S. I’ve also used “John Lewis” in the URL of this blog post. AND I’ve used the term “John Lewis” more than 4 times in the body text. Will the John Lewis police come knocking at my door?

What I’m listening to right now: Tweet – “Anymore”

Share This

Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.