I was making my way over the Vincent Thomas Bridge yesterday en route to the LBC, when a container truck bearing an unusual logo for MOL shipping caught my eye:

Pretty cool, right? I mean, a wide-eyed gator hoisting a nondescript (but surely valuable) shipment over one scaly/burly arm? And did you notice his tattoo? Because he has a tattoo. Let’s face it, you’re not likely to find a sweeter corporate emblem…not on a semi truck, anyway.

Naturally, my first thought was, “there has to be a t-shirt of this somewhere.” A quick Google search (internet skillz!) was fruitless–not even an unauthorized Cafepress knockoff to be had. What I did find was a cool story on John Young’s blog about his own quest for an elusive MOL gator tee.

John went a little more all-out than I did, going so far as to get in touch with MOL’s manager of corporate communications, who was delighted to offer up hi-res art files for John’s personal use. It’s a nice reminder that not every company is as fiercely overprotective of its IP as, for instance, a certain mouse-eared company that I don’t have to name (but it’s Disney).

And if anybody sees an old MOL teamster’s shirt on eBay, please drop me a comment here.

Tags: Branding, intellectual property, Mitsui, MOL

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.