'Newsweek' Advertiser Spoofs 'Time' Cover

You can be pretty sure that Newsweek would never let marketers appropriate its cover design and logo for a cheesy ad. But would it let them borrow Time's? You bet!

Just check out the ad for Delightful Deliveries, reproduced below, from the new issue of Newsweek. Clearly modeled on a Time cover, it features the -- trademarked -- red border and a similar logo font (although "Time" has been changed to "Times," presumably for legal-butt-covering reasons). The ad also contains a reference to Time's often-mocked-but-never-ignored "Person of the Year" franchise. I emailed Newsweek to ask about the ad -- in particular, if they had considered whether it violates Time's trademark -- but haven't heard back.

A spokesperson for Time declined to comment, but it's worth noting that the larger newsweekly probably couldn't have run this ad even if it wanted to without fear of rebuke from the American Society of Magazine Editors. ASME's guidelines for editors and publishers specifically state, "A magazine's logo should appear on advertising pages only in connection with advertisements for the magazine and its promotions or when an advertised product is touting editorial awards that it has won."