Trade Show Intelligence: $309 Million Judgement Against Mattel: Judge Says Market Intelligence Tactics Inappropriate

摘要

Hope the title got your attention. It’s sensational -- a $309 Million judgement against Mattel --and it even has market intelligence as the explanation. But what does it have to do with event intelligence? This issue’s column is a reminder about the ethics of event intelligence and what can go wrong when you don’t follow well-accepted SCIP guidelines.A few weeks ago Bonnie Hohhof alerted me to the Mattel judgement and asked that I consider it for an upcoming column. Bonnie also sent me references about it (these are included at the end of the column). My first reaction was “Uh oh, here we go again, another bad competitive intelligence story.” In the judgement the judge talks about Mattel using market intelligence tactics, so once again we have a lot of explaining to do. I also saw the size of the judgement ($309 Million) and thought “now our members companies may run scared again about market intelligence” (similar to what we have seen with the Xerox and P&G reaction of years gone by). So I decided to look into this and explain what happened to our members, and give them some ammunition (so to speak) if they are challenged about market intelligence.