Ray Mears interview in The Guardian

[firecrest]

I would have entered this one

But as it is they can go swivel.

they'd put the caption underneath it

Bovril. what else gives you the strength to raize and pillage?

 

[hammock monkey]

I would have entered this one

But as it is they can go swivel.

hahahaha, beautiful historic scandinavian turn of phrase

awesome pic - i can see why you wouldn't send that in, but i've sent in plenty to nikwax etc and had loads of free stuff with their competitions.
None of mine were any 'good' as such, but they conveyed the right feeling. I doubt they'll use any of mine for national campaigns (unless they're trying to corner the gurning chimp market?)

 

[BigShot]

Well - I sent an email after reading this thread and it was passed on to the brand manager at Bovril. He contacted me this morning and here is what he said.

Dear [BigShot],

My name is [Removed by Bigshot - just in case he's not keen on it being posted], and I am the Bovril brand manager at Unilever. Your email regarding the Bovril photo competition has been passed to me, as I understand you have serious concerns over some clauses in the terms and conditions.

Firstly, please let me assure you that it was never our intention to use this promotion as a vehicle to rights grab. As a keen photographer myself, I am equally concerned about such practices, and so I am deeply sorry if you felt that Bovril was acting inappropriately.

In terms of the clause you have identified, this is a standard clause which is used in a number of promotions. It is careful to only grant Bovril a license to use any photos that are submitted - all rights over the image remain with the owner. I would also stress that it gives this as a non-exclusive license, meaning that entering the competition should not prevent image owners from using their photos elsewhere.

From your email, I understand that the majority of your concerns are over the 'sub-license' condition. While I can appreciate your worries, in reality, this is due to the way that the Unilever business is set up. To try and explain, Unilever operates as 2 different companies; Unilever plc and Unilever UK, with the Bovril brand owned by one, and advertised by the other. Therefore, in order to use the images submitted in any capacity whatsoever (including simply putting them on the competition website), we need to be able to grant a sub-license to the other half of our own company. Apologies for the complexity, but I can assure you that it was never intended for the photos to be sold on, or put into a Unilever image library of any sort.

In response to your email, I have asked my legal team to look again and see if there is a way we can amend the terms and conditions to make our usage intentions more clear so that everyone may feel free to take part.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to get in touch with me, but I hope I have reassured you that it was never our intention to deceive or rights grab in any way.

Regards,
[Name removed by BigShot again for the same reason as above]

To which I sent a response pointing out a couple of things, one of which was the fact the licence was given to Millets too. A company that has a rather obvious use for such pictures.

Dear Mr. [Bovril brand manager type fella],

Thank you for your prompt reply. I wasn't aware of the split nature of Unilever, I can fully understand the need to licence pictures to both branches of the company. However, I would have thought that would be better, and less ambiguously covered by wording the clause to specifically mention Unilever UK and Unilever PLC.

I am aware that clauses like that are standard in many promotions, though I don't suppose it will surprise you to learn that I dislike seeing it in all those cases too. There are companies who would happily use the submitted photographs as the basis for advertising campaigns and also as a small stock library from which they can sell images to others. The practice of running a competition to collect images which can then be used in an advertising campaign can save a company many hundreds or even thousands of pounds, obviously depending on the nature of the campaign and the cost that would have been incurred had the images been taken to order or bought from a traditional stock agency. When that licence includes a sub-licence clause the potential profit is increased. All of this at the minimal cost of a few prizes for a select few from those who submitted photographs.

I am also aware that the licence was non-exclusive, I can only recall seeing one or two competitions which took exclusive rights and they were rightly attacked quite severely for doing so. It is the potential to use the photographs in non-related campaigns and to sell them on for other uses that gives cause for concern. The sub-licensing could also prove problematic if a photographer then wanted to sell that picture to another company. That image being used by another company in a campaign may prevent the photographer being able to profit from the image at any time in the future, not legally, but practically.
Whether or not that was not the intention of Unilever in promoting the competition, and I accept that in this case it may not be, the clause still allows for that. Of course, the licence is also granted to Millets, a company with a very obvious links to the outdoors and one which would probably benefit from having such a library of quality photographs. Wheter or not they have any intention of using the images in this manner is another issue, and one I assume you can not comment on, but the wording of clause 6 does give them that right.
Typically licences granted for the purposes you describe in your email - allowing the promoter to use the images at all - contain words to the effect of “...grant us the licence to use your submissions in matters related to this competition...” I'm no dab hand with legalese, but that's often the general gist of it.

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply, if you have no objections I'll pass on your response to some other people who have raised this issue on a discussion forum I read.

Regards,

[BigShot]

His reply to that was:

Thanks for getting back to me.
I can of course understand the points you raise below. Please feel free to inform others that it was not our intention to deceive, and certainly not to grab any image rights. I would appreciate if you could also let me know the forum, so that I have a look myself.

As I said, I am working closely with our legal department to refine the clause so it is clearer as to our intentions. Hopefully we will be in a position to update the website early next week to make the competition more inclusive. I would imagine that we will make sure that where an image is used, the owner is credited with the copyright accordingly. I will also clarify the position with regard to sub-licensing. Hopefully this will be acceptable?

He also asked for a link to this thread, so I imagine he'll be reading it too. No doubt he'll find the "go swivel" comment and picture rather amusing.

A friendly contact from a pretty open guy. As I told him in my final email.
As if to prove the old addage that "there is no such thing as bad publicity..." - after all this talk and seeing the email subject lines in my inbox - I could murder a Bovril!


By the way Wayland - nice shot!

 

[Wayland]

Be interesting to see what they come up with.

I'm always on the lookout for competitions and have done well in a few of them, but I always give ones with such clauses a miss, and I know a lot of other photographers that do as well.

 

[Wayland]

Just as an update on this, they have now changed the rules in line with the Pro-Imaging bill of rights.

It is now a worthwhile competition to enter.

 

[wicca]

Yes they would, I for one would not be here right now as it was one of his tv shows that got me into bushcraft. Can't imagine him as a squaddie though . . .

Squaddie! squaddie!...wretched boy Stupot..a Royal... purleese.