Where Did That Logo Go?

The Story Behind Removing Brand Logos on TV

The vehicles could be just as entertaining. I might recognize the make and model of a truck, but the badge identifying its manufacturer would be covered or missing.

Lately, the game has gotten harder.

While watching the most recent season of Sullivan’s Crossing, I noticed that identifying logos on vehicles seemed to have disappeared almost completely. I have noticed something similar on recent episodes of Heartland. They no longer always look covered.

They look erased.

I cannot tell you exactly how either production is accomplishing that. The vehicles may have been physically debadged before filming. The logos may have been removed through traditional visual effects. Newer artificial intelligence tools can also detect, track and remove objects from moving video with increasing ease.

Whatever the technique, watching it happen sent me down a rabbit hole about trademarks, product placement and the business of television.

It also made me realize that I had been playing this game long before I ever made a film.

I just didn’t know filmmakers had a name for it.

Electrical tape to the rescue

During my years working for the St. Louis Cardinals, sponsorship relationships were an important part of the team’s business model. Major League Baseball had national sponsors, while individual clubs controlled sponsorship inventory within their own markets and across numerous product categories.

That meant a logo was rarely just a logo.

Ford was a Cardinals sponsor. Chevrolet had a relationship with Major League Baseball. Coke was a major Cardinals sponsor and had our pouring rights, while Pepsi had an MLB relationship.

Most of the year, those different relationships peacefully coexisted. Then the Cardinals would make the postseason and MLB’s national sponsorship rights would assume greater importance inside the ballpark.

Suddenly, the Ford vehicles normally displayed at Busch Stadium had to disappear. Chevrolet vehicles took their place.

That could create another problem.

If one of those Chevys arrived with tires made by a company that competed with an MLB sponsor, someone from our sales operation might have to cover the tire manufacturer’s logo with electrical tape.

Think about the absurdity of that for a moment.

Nobody looking at the vehicle suddenly believed it no longer had tires. The tape wasn’t hiding the product. It was hiding the commercial identity of the product.

Water created similar problems.

Ice Mountain had an exclusive sponsorship relationship with the Cardinals, so our clubhouse was stocked with Ice Mountain water. During the postseason, however, MLB’s Pepsi relationship changed the commercial environment surrounding press conferences and other league-controlled activities.

We sometimes found ourselves removing labels from bottles of perfectly good water.

If a player walked into a press conference carrying a clearly identifiable Ice Mountain bottle, someone might have to grab it and pull off the label.

Nobody was pretending it wasn’t Ice Mountain water.

We were pretending it was just water.

Years later, I would watch Amy Fleming use an obvious MacBook with something covering the Apple and think: I know this game.

Apparently, we had been “greeking”

Film and television professionals have been doing variations of this forever. The practice is commonly called “greeking,” which generally means obscuring, altering or replacing recognizable trademarks or other identifying material appearing on camera.

The old-school techniques aren’t particularly sophisticated.

Turn the Coke can around. Put tape over the logo. Remove the badge from the truck. Cover the Apple with a sticker. Create a fake beer label. Invent a fictional cereal company. Build a computer interface that looks familiar enough for viewers to understand but isn’t actually Apple’s or Microsoft’s.

Once you start looking for these things, you see them everywhere.

What surprised me as I researched the subject was discovering that productions don’t necessarily do all this because showing the real trademark would be illegal.

The law is considerably more nuanced than that.

What trademark law says

In the United States, trademark law generally does not give a company absolute control over every appearance of its product or logo in a movie or television show.

The central concern is typically whether the use is likely to create confusion about the source of something or falsely suggest sponsorship, affiliation or endorsement. Courts have allowed recognizable trademarked products to appear incidentally in expressive works when viewers would have little reason to believe the manufacturer sponsored the production.

Canada approaches trademark law somewhat differently and provides protection against uses that can depreciate the goodwill associated with a registered trademark. Still, I found no Canadian law that simply says a television production cannot show the Apple logo on a laptop or the manufacturer’s badge on a truck.

In fact, Canadian regulators expressly recognize product placement as part of the television business.

So why go to the trouble of covering all those logos?

Because “Are we legally allowed to show this?” is only one of the questions a professional production must ask. The more interesting question may be: “Why would we show it?”

That was a question I understood from baseball.

Who owns the category?

One of the things professional sports taught me is that almost anything can become commercial inventory once somebody figures out how to sell it.

Automotive is a category. Soft drinks are a category. Beer is a category. Water is a category. Tires can be a category. Once a company pays for exclusivity in a category, displaying a competitor’s product can suddenly become significant. It will make a sponsor angry to see their competitor show up in what is their exclusive domain. 

Think about how Lou Flemming would react if she saw Pryce Beef where Heartland Beef had the exclusive. That is how a paying sponsor reacts when they see a competitor staking a claim where they paid for exclusivity. In the context of sports, we call that ambush marketing when someone tries to get a free ride on the coattails of a big sponsored event.   

The Cardinals weren’t covering a logo because we feared that a tire manufacturer would sue us for showing its trademark. We were covering it because someone else had paid for commercial rights that we had an obligation to protect. That economic consideration matters in entertainment, too.

Broadcasters sell sponsorships and brand integrations. Producers can negotiate product-placement agreements.

Companies may supply vehicles, computers, clothing, food or other products in exchange for exposure. Some pay for deeper integrations. Others build promotional campaigns around the entertainment property.

Sometimes the logo isn’t being covered because the trademark owner might complain. It is being covered because somebody else paid to be there. Consider Heartland.

For years, Ram trucks have been visible in the series. In 2014, Ontario Ram Truck dealers announced a promotional partnership with Amber Marshall, who plays Amy Fleming. The announcement specifically noted that Marshall drove

Ram trucks personally and that Amy drove one on Heartland.

That doesn’t establish that Ram paid to place those trucks in the series. I haven’t found evidence proving that. But it demonstrates how quickly the lines between character, actor, television program and commercial brand can intersect. 

The truck can serve the story while simultaneously carrying commercial value.

The Canadian wrinkle

This gets particularly interesting with Canadian television because trademark law is only one part of a much larger production ecosystem.

Canadian television is supported by an intricate combination of broadcasters, distributors, federal and provincial tax incentives, production funds and international partnerships. Within that system, the distinction between entertainment and advertising can matter financially.

Under Canada’s federal production tax-credit rules, advertising is not an eligible genre. You can’t use credits to pay for advertising, so productions that use product placement revenue have to account for that.  The guidelines look at whether commercial promotion becomes so prominent that the entertainment and advertising become difficult to distinguish.

That does not mean a stray Ford logo disqualifies a television series from receiving a tax credit. Quite the opposite. The Canadian guidelines specifically recognize that incidental and occasional background logos that aren’t visually emphasized don’t turn a program into advertising.

But it illustrates something important. Brands appearing on screen exist within a larger economic system.

Canadian broadcasters also sell product integrations and sponsorship opportunities.

Bell Media, for example, openly markets brand partnerships that can integrate advertisers into its programming.

Sullivan’s Crossing demonstrates how complicated that ecosystem can become. The series originated in a Canadian production and broadcasting environment involving Bell Media and CTV, but it also involves The CW and Fremantle and has found a large American audience through Netflix.

One television program can therefore travel through multiple territories, distributors, broadcasters and commercial relationships. Suddenly, making a logo disappear doesn’t seem quite so silly. It can be the simplest solution to a surprisingly complicated problem.

Why not just ask Apple?

This raises another obvious question. If everyone can tell the computer is a MacBook anyway, why not simply ask Apple for permission?

Sometimes that makes sense. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Once a production formally involves a brand, another set of questions can arise. How is the product being portrayed? Who is using it? What is the character doing while using it? Does the brand want script approval? Is there an existing sponsorship conflict? Is the production receiving free equipment? Is there an opportunity to turn the appearance into a paid integration?

Sometimes the relationship is valuable enough to pursue, while sometimes creative independence is more valuable.

Sometimes nobody wants to spend the time negotiating any of it, and sometimes the easiest answer is a $2 horse sticker.

Professional producing means knowing which situation you’re in.

Electrical tape has gotten smarter

What has changed dramatically is the technology available to solve these problems.

For decades, the best solution was to deal with the logo before the camera rolled. Art departments covered trademarks, created fictional labels or physically removed badges.

Then visual-effects tools became sophisticated enough to fix problems afterward. Artists could track a moving object, create a clean plate and digitally paint out the unwanted logo.

Now artificial intelligence is making that process considerably easier.

Modern computer-vision systems can scan video and identify logos and branded products. Some are specifically marketed for detecting competing brands and enforcing category exclusivity—the exact problem my colleagues and I were solving with our own eyes at Busch Stadium.

Other tools can remove an identified object by tracking it across frames and reconstructing the pixels that should exist behind it. Adobe’s Content-Aware Fill for video has offered a version of this capability for years, and newer generative AI systems are pushing object removal much further.

There are even products today using names such as Wipe AI that advertise the ability to remove logos and other unwanted elements from video. I haven’t established that Netflix, Heartland or Sullivan’s Crossing uses that technology, and I don’t know whether the mysteriously clean grilles I’ve noticed are the product of AI at all.

But the capability unquestionably exists.

The evolution is easy to see. First, we used electrical tape and stickers. Then we digitally painted things out. Now software can increasingly find the offending logo, track it and help erase it.

The principle hasn’t changed. The electrical tape has just gotten smarter.

Everything inside the frame has value

For independent filmmakers, there is a larger lesson here.

A pickup truck parked behind your character may seem like nothing more than set dressing. It isn’t necessarily.

That truck could create a clearance question. It could create a sponsorship conflict. It could provide authenticity. The manufacturer might provide the vehicle and reduce your production costs. A dealer might become a promotional partner. A larger agreement could turn the vehicle into product-placement revenue.

Or maybe none of those things make sense and you should simply remove the badge. The professional question isn’t whether every logo needs to be covered. It is whether you understand why the logo is there.

There are productions that move aggressively in the other direction. Yellowstone built an entire commercial ecosystem around the cultural world created by the series. Brands, apparel and other products became part of an economic universe extending well beyond the television screen.

That’s the other side of the horse sticker on the MacBook. One approach neutralizes commercial value, while the other monetizes it. Both begin by recognizing that the value exists.

Once you see it, you can’t stop

I suspect I will continue playing my little game whenever I watch Heartland, Sullivan’s Crossing or any other show.  Particularly now that I've become a bit obsessed with watching Canadian television shows.  I’ll notice the suspiciously generic truck grille. I’ll look at the laptop lid. I’ll wonder whether someone physically removed a badge before production or whether an editor made it disappear months later.

And when Amy Fleming opens an obvious MacBook with a horse where the Apple should be, I’ll probably smile because that “greeking” represents something much larger.

There is an entire invisible economic infrastructure surrounding what appears inside the frame. Lawyers think about trademarks. Producers think about clearance. Insurers think about liability. Broadcasters and sales departments think about sponsorship categories. Brands think about exposure. Art departments think about what they can cover. Editors and visual-effects artists increasingly think about what they can erase.

The audience simply sees a computer.

Working for the Cardinals taught me long ago that a logo is rarely just a logo. Sometimes it represents millions of dollars in contractual rights, and sometimes protecting those rights requires nothing more sophisticated than a roll of electrical tape.

Technology may be changing the tools, but it hasn’t changed the underlying business lesson. Everything inside the frame has potential value. Professional storytellers should understand who is benefitting from it.

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About Ron Watermon

Ron Watermon is a creator, builder, media entrepreneur, filmmaker, and the founder of STORYSMART. He writes about professional storytelling, media entrepreneurship, filmmaking, and the business of turning stories into valuable assets.

Ron is the author of STORYSMART Storytelling for ALL and is currently building STORYSMART STUDIOS, an independent media company dedicated to developing, producing, and owning profitable, enduring original media properties.

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