The Great LiMu Emu Swindle?
By: James Swift
If you’ve watched any NFL game over the last two years — or for that matter, any type of primetime television programming — you’re likely well-acquainted with the characters LiMu Emu and Doug. A pastiche of the time-tested buddy-cop trope a’la Starsky and Hutch and CHiPs, the two spokescharacters for Liberty Mutual — the Boston-headquartered insurance Leviathan with more than $43 billion in consolidated annual revenue in 2019 — tend to gad about in bright yellow shirts while getting caught up in all sorts of wacky, pop culture-referencing misadventures, in the process always driving home the company’s corporate tao in easily digestible 30-second chunks.
Of course, the big variable in the ad campaign is the notion that one of those characters just so happens to be a humongous flightless bird. Indeed, it’s a fairly novel concept for a multi-million-dollar ad campaign that comes complete with its own in-character Twitter page — that is, until you realize that a Texas writer already drummed up the idea four years before the first LiMu Emu commercial hit the airwaves.
“The idea started from a joke I heard where a man asks a genie for a tall, beautiful chick with long legs and big eyes and the genie gives him an ostrich,” recounts James Hold, a prolific Houston-area scribe who’s bibliography contains a deluge of pun-tastic offerings with titles like “Remember the Aloe, Moe” “Have Ring Will Travel” and “A Cat of Many Colors.”
When Hold started putting pen to parchment — or, perhaps more literally, finger to keyboard — the end result was a 2015 short story called “Incident in the Guadalupe Mountains,” which focused on a character named O’Ryan and his ostrich compatriot. Apparently, Hold had quite the fondness for the duo, since he followed that up with several more stories revolving around the pair. Those yarns were ultimately tied together into a 2016 compilation called Incidental Contact — a good three years, mind you, before the San Francisco advertising firm Goodby Silverstein and Partners came up with the concept for LiMu Emu and Doug.
“I paid them no attention at first since I generally mute all commercials or change the channel,” Hold recalled. “It was only when my sister mentioned it to me that I took notice.”
As you’d expect, Hold wasn’t exactly thrilled by what he saw. Indeed, even now, he says he feels pangs of anger everytime the commercials air. (An aside, but it’s not that Hold is alone in that sentiment — an apoplectic rant against the commercial mascots on the website The Cranky Critic has over 300 comments from individuals likewise bemoaning the ad campaign as, among other pejoratives,”super annoying” and “a sad example of what the advertising industry has to offer.”)
Hold listed the similarities between his dynamic duo and the one that inundates the airwaves on, seemingly, a daily basis.
“Both have medium builds, wear beards — not at first, but later in the series O’Ryan sports whiskers — and they exhibit eccentric, somewhat offbeat characteristics,” he said. “Both talk to their bird companions constantly as though they were real people … which, in O’Ryan’s case, she is, a human female trapped in a bird’s body.”
Hold said he made several efforts to reach out to Liberty Mutual about the similarities — be they adventitious or otherwise.
Each time, however, Hold said his efforts have proven fruitless.
“In April 2019, I sent a postal letter to the advertising and public relations department of LiMu explaining my situation,” he said. “I stressed that I did not want to cause trouble and only wanted to find out if it was coincidental. And whatever the case, it would be polite of them to somehow, somewhere, acknowledge the existence of my prior work.”
Hold said he received no replies from the perennial Fortune 100 spotholder.
“Finally, using my wife’s Facebook account, I posted the same inquiry pointing out the similarities to my book,” Hold said. “The post was immediately taken down and my wife was blocked from further posting.”
Granted, Hold noted that he doesn’t have any tangible proof that Liberty Mutual or its advertising partners ever read his tome.
“I mean how would you prove it?” he said. “However, I feel the fact they refuse to answer my inquiries and blocked me from their Facebook account must indicate something. After all, if it is all a coincidence, why don’t they say so?”
Uncommon Journalism reached out to the ad firm behind the Liberty Mutual mascots. Representatives of Goodby Silverstein and Partners, however, never responded.
Nor was the trademark correspondent for LiMu Emu and Doug — for those wondering, the official United States Patent and Trademark Office serial number for the characters is #88288096 — all that interested in speaking on the matter.
Uncommon Journalism also sought trademark representative Nadya Sand of the Atlanta-based firm Alston and Bird, LLP for comments. As of the time of this article’s publication, Sand had yet to reply to the inquiry.
Nor have the local newspapers or consumer advocates on television in Hold’s neck of the woods shown much interest in his Sisyphean struggle against the multi-billion-dollar insurance behemoth.
One thing Hold said he certainly isn’t pursuing, however, is any form of legal action against LiMu or its advertising affiliates.
“I can’t afford a lawyer, I’m retired and living on a fixed income,” he said. “I asked around but nobody will handle my case pro bono.”
Still showing a penchant for the wordplay, Hold noted that he couldn’t find any lawyers willing to take up the case that are “pro any of the other guys in U2,” either.
Hold brought up a lawsuit from 2005, in which professional wrestler Dean Roll accused Miramax, LLC of infringing upon his “Shark Boy” trademark — this, days before the release of the film The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D.
That particular case dragged on for two years, with the parties ultimately settling out of court for an unspecified amount.
Even if legal action was on the table, Hold said it’s unlikely any suits would prove effective — lest you forget, he’s an ex-meter reader hailing from Missouri City and the other guys reported more than $133 billion in assets at the end of last year.
Still, Hold said he’s not looking for an easy payout. Rather, he said he just wants “a civil, polite and public acknowledgement” from the LiMu monolith that his ostrich odd couple came along before theirs did.
“My book will sell or fail on its own merits, I just don’t want a potential reader to stumble across it and think I’m ripping LiMu off when I was there ahead of them,” he said. “I just want a fair playing field is all.”
Thank you, James, for bringing my plight to public attention. I greatly appreciate this since you are the first, and so far only, person to hear me out. Guys like you do a great service, not just for me, but for all the cases you cover.
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