How ownable are brand icons?

I was asked recently what worried me about the new PG Tips campaign. Ownability is an issue for clients, especially if, like PG Tips, you use another brand's icon in your campaign.

When building brands, particularly on the fantastical medium of broadcast TV, it is often a case of creating icons or fantastical little characters to create a point of reference for brand and consumer. To build an identity and personality for them and to give them values, we must personalise them to a brand purpose. The messages that the character now gives both imparts brand trust and credibility to really push the it into the shelf space of the mind of the consumer.

So, what of the infamous Monkey? I mean, we can see why consumers are even more important in this arena, as judge and jury. Without their understanding of how the icon functions for this purpose, the project, the icon, the brand...it's all lost. I think that with this case, it was about the creative execution working to mould the icon into the new brand picture, and easing it in, for the client and later, the consumer. That would be the best effort the agency could do to placate the client's ownability worries, to show them exactly what was intended and that they could almost 'play off' the ownability problem.

I think as a general rule, icons are pretty ownable. They are linked inextricably to the brands they serve. But I do think that this link can falter, like with PG Tips, they positively used the 'dual' ownability for the brand's positive purpose. I am pretty sure this was hard to sell, but it was worth it.