Punxsutawney Phil Needs a Trademark.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010Punxsutawney Phil, the world’s most famous groundhog, has an online reputation management problem.
He emerged in Western Pennsylvania on Tuesday to see his shadow, which traditionally means winter will last another six weeks.
12,000+ people from as far as Chile and the Netherlands, came to watch the pseudo-German tradition unfold. It has mutated from the original holiday of “Candelmas” and has become somewhat of a pop-culture tradition more than anything.
People stand around in near freezing, and sometimes below freezing, temperatures to watch a Marmot look for a shadow. This is all with the understanding that a superstition will forecast the weather for the next month and a half, approximately.
Far from a factual undertaking, the whole circus is now geared towards entertainment.
You can see “Phil” at his website; www.punxsutawneyphil.com . The site header is carefully worded;
“Greetings from Punxsutawney! A tribute site to the world’s most famous weather-forecasting groundhog”.
However, a direct search for the Marmot today, puts his site at 3rd place, behind “news” and then “groundhog.org”. This begs the question, why wouldn’t Phil want his traffic pointing to his site and then monetize it heavily?
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