Did Coca-Cola, or whatever advertising agency they hired to put their recent television ad together purposely try to deceive the public into believing the ghost of Johnny Cash was endorsing the American beverage brand? That is what a new lawsuit asserts, filed on Tuesday, November 25th at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee in Nashville.
The commercial in dispute is entitled “Fan Work Is Thirsty Work” (see below), and is aimed at college football fans. It started airing during games in August, and has continued throughout the season. Fans began to comment on social media that whoever was singing in the ad sure sounded like Johnny Cash. This caught the ire of the Johnny Cash estate, who aggregated these comments and used them as evidence in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit asserts that the ad is purposely trying to deceive the public into thinking the Cash estate signed off on it. “Despite capitalizing on the intrinsic value of Johnny Cash’s legendary Voice, Coca-Cola never even bothered to ask the trust for a license,” the lawsuit claims. In John R. Cash Revocable Trust v. Coca-Cola Co., the estate is requesting the court block Coca-Cola from running the add, along with seeking monetary damages of an unspecified amount.
Listening to the ad itself, the first portion of it most certainly sounds like Johnny Cash singing, and a Johnny Cash song in style of The Tennessee Three. The second half actually sounds more similar to performer Paul Cauthen, who rather famously tries to sound a lot like Johnny Cash.
The song featured in the ad itself is not a specific track from any particular artist that can be publicly identified. In the lawsuit, the estate claims Coca-Cola hired a Johnny Cash tribute singer to perform the track, though no such singer is named. In truth, this very well might be the case of AI being prompted to make a 15-second track in the style of Johnny Cash, and inserting it into a commercial, stimulating further alarm about the impending AI paradigm.
But is the 15 second snippet really similar enough where likeness rights were infringed? Could this stimulate further lawsuits as AI borrows from the legacies of legendary artists to evoke nostalgia in advertising? I guess we’ll find out as John R. Cash Revocable Trust v. Coca-Cola Co. moves forward.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source savingcountrymusic.com ’
