It's safe to say that Canadian pop duo, Tegan and Sara are familiar with Vancouver Is Awesome. We did THIS INTERVIEW with Tegan back in 2009 where she shared some of her most awesome things about Vancouver, then she put together THIS GUEST PLAYLIST for us in 2010. We did THIS INTERVIEW with the two when they were nominated for the Polaris Music Prize and we've featured them countless other times over the years.
Screen capture from the official video for "Everything Is Awesome" for The LEGO Movie
First I joked about The LEGO Movie "ripping off" our logo by using "our" font for the word AWESOME in the trailer for the film, then I dug a little deeper and found the official video for the song, which is actually the theme song and is heard throughout it. The song was produced by Mark Mothersbaugh (yes, of DEVO!) and performed by Tegan and Sara along with the hilarious dudes of The Lonely Island. The screen grab from it above is uncannily familiar to our branding we've been using since 2008 (using Futura Bold, where the trailer uses Futura Extra Bold - "our" typeface), and I wrote an email asking Tegan if it was in fact a nod to us but I haven't heard back from her yet.
Our wordmark on the right, with our “Most Awesome Award” signature thumbs up graphic, on the left
Basically I wanted to take this opportunity to say that if they did borrow from our brand for the main theme song of this "$69.1M mega hit" (which is heard throughout it, and featured in trailers), that's TOTALLY AWESOME!
However, we're incorporated as The Awesome Media Network Inc, and we've worked for years to establish this brand of ours. If we were super corporate we'd be getting our lawyers involved at this juncture, but we're not. We're nice. We're all about spreading positivity and feel the spirit of what we do aligns really well with LEGO, and we're happy that maybe - just maybe - we inspired somebody over there. But we do have one public request we're making to Warner Bros Pictures and The LEGO Group:
We'll get the children of our staff to put together some of the sets, we'll do a blog post about that, then we'll make a dropoff to a number of Vancouver charities with the other sets we hope you send. Then we'll sign anything your lawyers want us to sign, saying that we don't want to sue you. Because we don't. There's still a really big chance that this is a coincidence (and even if it is, we want to give some LEGO to kids in need).
LEGO is awesome. Mark, Tegan, Sara and The Lonely Island are awesome. And we want to teach our children lessons about giving, while helping local kids in need, with help from one of our (and their) favourite brands. Our office address is HERE, LEGO and Warner Bros. Thanks for listening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StTqXEQ2l-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avObDwBY0yo
