Washington Post Got It Years Before the Register Did : Marketing: The $1-million local campaign parrots the East Coast paper’s word for word.

The Orange County Register’s new $1-million advertising campaign--”If you don’t get it, you don’t get it”--has drawn a strong protest from the Washington Post, whose long-running ad campaign uses exactly the same wording.

Mary Ann Werner, assistant counsel for the Washington Post, said Wednesday that her newspaper has asked the Register to stop using the phrase.

The Washington Post applied for a trademark for its campaign slogan last fall, Werner said, and has been using it for almost two years. It appears on transit posters and in print, television and radio ads.

“It’s a really successful campaign we’ve developed, and we have an interest in protecting that,” Werner said, predicting an amicable resolution of the matter this week.

John Schueler, the Register’s executive vice president and general manager, said the publishers of the two newspapers are discussing the situation.

The Register’s campaign, its first with a full-service ad agency, was created by Stein Robaire Helm of Los Angeles. The ads feature puzzled-looking people saying, “I don’t get it.” Below that, with a photo of the Register, is the phrase, “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.”

The ads are being displayed on Orange County Transportation Authority buses and bus shelters, at shopping malls and in publications across Orange County. An industry insider estimates the cost of the campaign at just over $1 million, not including TV spots slated to run later this year.

Schueler said he questions how the Register could be infringing on a Washington Post trademark when at least one other newspaper, the Oregonian, has also borrowed from the Post campaign, though not word for word.

The Oregonian’s tag line is, “When you get it, you’ll get it.”

Schueler said the Register’s “don’t get it” campaign is only a small part of a long-term marketing strategy and was never intended to run for very long.

“It’s the teaser part of the campaign,” he said. “It’s not the central issue.”

An internal Register circular to its staff describes the phrase as the “theme or . . . ‘concept’ of the new campaign.” The circular said the campaign will run for 33 weeks.