As detailed on the Smiley Company website, for the past 25 years an urban myth based on misinformation has been propagated by the media and spread by those with a poor understanding of legal concepts like trademarks, patents and copyright.
Urban myths are an area of modern folklore centring around seemingly believable stories that lead to the dissemination of misinformation. They typically involve rare and exceptional events that purportedly happened to a real person or in a real location. Just like memes, urban legends propagate across communities, metamorphosising over time.
Two specialists who researched the topic, Carlo Strapparava and Marco Guerini, discuss the concept of ‘stickiness’ in their book The Tipping Point, which characterises what makes urban myths memorable. The authors define ‘sticky’ ideas as those that grab people’s attention by surprising them. Strapparava and Guerini suggest that a sticky idea also needs to be simple, yet concrete enough to be understood and remembered later, credible and emotional, and tell a story through narrative.
According to the Smiley Company website, the Harvey Ball myth appears to tick all these boxes, with an incredibly simple yet emotional story that appealed to the mass media. To debunk it demands long and technical explanations that appeal less to journalists seeking to create engaging and emotional stories.
Harvey Ball was commissioned to create a badge for a marketing campaign by the US insurance firm State Mutual. He came up with a yellow smiling face and was paid $45 for his work. Ball did not attempt to register a trademark against the image, and indeed, would not have had the option to do so, since the badge and campaign were the intellectual property of State Mutual and the idea of Joe Young (their head of marketing) and other team members. Nevertheless, the crux of the Harvey Ball myth is that Ball is the true inventor of Smiley, a claim that is demonstrably untrue and misleading.
On the reverse of the badge are the words: ‘The smile insurance companies, Worcester guarantee mutual. State Mutual of America.’ This was an indication of a source that referenced State Mutual, not Harvey Ball – and not the Smiley name. Neither State Mutual nor Harvey Ball attempted to lay claim to the Smile badge at the time. Indeed, the badge made no reference to the word ‘Smiley’ at all. Rather, documents discovered in 2024 reveal that State Mutual always referred to the image as the smile button or happy face and never as Smiley. Nor did State Mutual or Harvey Ball attempt to register a federal trademark against the image.
The true origins of Smiley date back to 1972, when the iconic yellow smiley face trademark was created by Franklin Loufrani, a French journalist. Loufrani was tasked with spearheading a feel-good campaign in the France Soir newspaper designed to counter negative headlines reporting civil unrest across France. At the time of Smiley’s creation, Franklin Loufrani, smiley face owner and founder of the Smiley Company, had never crossed paths with Harvey Ball. It was not until 1998 that Harvey Ball made his claims to the Associated Press to make it sound like he might be responsible somehow for the Smiley company’s success.
Today, Smiley and its various reiterations generate somewhere in the region of $500 million in revenue annually for the licensees and retailers selling its products. The Smiley brand name was created and promoted by smiley face creator Franklin Loufrani, establishing the image as an internationally recognised logo that has been adopted by various cultural movements over the decades thanks to the creative and networking efforts of its owners.
Smiley’s global recognition is thanks to the Smiley Company’s marketing campaigns, creative products and cultural collaborations over the course of more than 52 years. In addition, the internet language promoted by Franklin Loufrani’s son, Nicolas Loufrani, exponentially increased Smiley’s impact and reach as part of modern culture. Indeed, Nicolas Loufrani used the Original Smiley Logo to create the first logographic written language, allowing these logos to be used for free in the digital world.
