Company and Product Naming, Brands and Trademarks: rants & raves, cheers & jeers, fun & foibles
Not evey mother names her future Hollywood siren with a hot name like Raquel Welch. But if you start life as Tara Leigh Patrick, and really want to make an impression on your fans, then you deserve a big award for changing your name to Carmen Electra.
Maybe you even deserve two awards, for creating both a hot first name and a smart last name. As a naming professional I loved you before I even saw how you light up a show.
As it celebrates its 10th Anniversary, it is interesting to look back and see that the techies who founded Paypal first named the company Confinity. It is fun to read John Powers firsthand account of how this all came to be .. see www.Confinity.com. He is quick to point out that he never came up with that name. Regardless, Paypal is so much better than Fieldlink, the name he first used.
If you have ever shopped for or sold goods on eBay, you know the magic of Paypal. If you have ever paid or received money from contract services half way around the world, you know the magic of Paypal and the convenience of paying people almost instantly when they don’t take credit cards.. or want to use them if they do have them.
Now if only they provided the same level of support to English speakers in Spain that they provide Spanish speakers in California, that would be the icing on the cake. Especially for the rural community where no mail goes to a physical house address. How can they deny full service when you are a property owner simply because your mail goes to a box number? Not all countries and rural towns are spoiled with the US level of mail delivery! In more and more parts of the world, you go get your mail at a mail box center.
All around a lot of countries, ladies know the brand name Bioré. The name just seems to sound like it cleans your pores in a classy fashion. Yet the name roots are so basic and simple, as some of the trademark fights show. Other have tried to have products called BioRe and Bio Regenaration… same idea - but with no class. The addition of that accent over the e makes all the difference doesn’t it? Changes BioRe into Bee Oar Ray. From the mundane to the classy, as only the French language can do.
Of course, the big irony of this name is that the product line is not sold in France or anywhere on the European continent. The brand is actually owned and managed by KAO of Japan nowadays. But who cares. In fact, who cares what the ingredients do. If I wanted a skin cleanser I would instinctively believe in one with such a cool name.
A few years back, we all had to endure an ad agency showing off around the country about how they branded milk with their famous Got Milk ads. I still have a problem with their claims. They may have created a little more awareness about milk, and had some interesting campaigns that became PR items in and of themselves, but I defy you to name 2 brands of milk. Most of us barely know what brand we usually buy ourselves. All I know is my milk of choice comes in a blue carton. And while this campaign was running, they were mostly missing the youth audience that 7Up was happily scooping up at all the X-Games.
On the other hand, what a spectacular job the water industry has done of coming up with different and strong brands, even though all the water scientists tell us we are better off drinking tap water. No, we’d rather pollute the landfills of the world with all those expensive plastic water bottles - even those of us who are thinking green!
Perrier is one of the original and on-going classics in this field. They had us believing in the classiness of French water long ago, so much so it is acceptable to drink in fine bars and restaurants. They were closely followed by Evian as well. Probably because of the weight (and stupidity) of shipping water all around the country there are only a few national brands like Aquafina, DeSani (terrible name!) and Crystal Geyser. If you travel a lot, you can almost remember what airport you are in by what bottled water brand they are selling. Talking Rain tastes funny to me since I don’t live in the Pacific Northwest, but I do love the name.
BottledWaterWeb.com lists 80 bottlers of water now in the USA, yet we all have our favorites and swear we can tell the difference. There are probably a lot more milk bottlers (old theme by now.. I know)! But despite being a namer by profession, I am very visual and of course I am a regular consumer too. Nothing ever jumped into my shopping cart as quickly as Fiji water did the first time I saw their display. The square bottle with the see through label is a magic story in consumer packaging and deserves more attention. Shipping water all the way from Fiji must be expensive, and so they have to compete on something other than price. I still love the fact that they are the first product I have ever seen where the inside of the label shows you a lovely water scene through the water in the bottle itself. I don’t care what it costs. I sometimes “need” this water to decorate my desk. As a result, I believe it tastes good too and I buy their story about how it is natural and untouched by man.
Sweeping across the nation is a new chain of high class Chinese restaurants called P.F. Chang’s. Imagine if they had just been called Chang’s. Wouldn’t they have sounded very common? Wouldn’t it have been very difficult to own, trademark and protect that name?
On the other hand, what a difference a few initials make! Suddenly a touch of class is added.. even if you haven’t tried one of their restaurants so far. Pure initials are a disaster from a marketing point of view for most new entities unless they are backed up with megabucks marketing, but initials plus a common word really help free up some unique name space and customer mind share.
So how do you pick which initials to use? Peter Fleming (of the famous Fleming Steakhouses), simply used his own. And so there really is no Mr. P.F. Chang to greet you ever… but don’t tell everyone. Simply take them out for a new class of Chinese American food.
Some names are just plain fun. No one knows what they mean or where they came from, but they bring a sense of warmth to our hearts and a smile to our faces when we hear them. And every year about now in the middle of ice hockey season, I want to run out and hug a Zamboni!
Sure I can get all analytical and research it and find that these crazy lovable machines are simply named after their founder, but why spoil the simple things in life. A Zamboni is a Zamboni and that is that. After all, not a lot of industrial equipment has inspired its own fan sites (e.g. www.dochertyfamily.com/zamboni.htm for one) or allowed its owners to make it part of their marketing and brand experience for the fans.
Our local San Jose Sharks do it as well as anybody, as you can in this picture of one of their Zamboni’s soaking up some rays for a change. Both Zamboni and the San Jose Sharks deserve some sort of marketing awards for this!
The dictionary defines Android as a robot with a human appearance. Isn’t it just the old word for Googlelite? And therefore very suitable for Google’s phone operating system development platform? So the much rumored “gphone” was just that - a rumor. But wait, the trademark filing is for hardware and software. And it seems like even their lawyers operate in the very minimalist interface world that has been Google’s signature all along. I doubt I have ever seen any other lawyer file a trademark application in category 9 and simple declare the description as “hardware, software”. This will be fun to watch as it progresses through the USPTO.. but for now.. Google’s lawyers win a 3 trophy award for simplicity. They obviously didn’t come from Intel where the Pentium trademark filing scrolls on for pages and pages of unintelligible fine print. You’d think they were defining each piece of a rocket ship!
As a lovely sideline to the Android story, many more people are discovering that for years they have been using phones with software based on the Symbian platform… a name that yours truly came up with about 8 years ago. There are millions and millions out there.. and finally my name sees the light of day. I had a fascination with the word symbiosis from when I first learned what it meant.. and finally found a great use for it in a naming project where we had NEC, Nokia and Motorola for a client.. simultaneously.
You could invent an internet browser and steal somebody else’s boring name and called it Internet Explorer (and later pay $7mill to settle the legal infraction), or you could stop being so pedantic and name it Firefox!
But what do you do when your direct competitor has scooped up the ultra cool Geek Squad.. and equipped them with a lot more decorated VW bugs?
Well, you set the dogs on fire.. and call it Firedog and get your service people jumping through hoops to be of assistance! Congratulations to Circuit City (a big company) to have the chutzpah to pick such a name. Sure beats old style names like Circuit Service Team.
I have previously written posts about names that cut through the noise, but in the domain name registration space there is one that stands head and shoulders above the crowd. Here are some of the boring sounding ones:
Register.com
Network Solutions.com
Register Fly (that turned out to be a bit of a Fly by night)
RegNow
Registration Technologies
Domain Name
…and 50+ others starting with the word Domain!
And then there is GoDaddy! I have seen staid business people literally do a double-take when this name is mentioned, either because of the shock of the name for a very serious and important business, or because they have seen some of GoDaddy’s fun marketing campaigns.. and don’t realize it is a business site, not a consumer one.
This name obviously did not come from the boardroom. What magic one man can do (Bob Parsons), with the right personality… even though he is backed up by a staff of thousands, all of whom understand the concept of customer service - with a smile. Go Daddy Go - even if you are already number one!
I have actually been approached by marketing students who have asked why Hyundai doesn’t change its name. Well, not so easy for an international auto company, especially where it takes so much time and money to build brand awareness. Plus no one wants to repeat one of the biggest naming mistakes of all time - when Datsun changed their name to Nissan to satisfy a few investors… and alienated a few million consumers and customers for years.
But at least Hyundai is using colorful and descriptive model names to cut through the noise of numbers and boring old names the other auto companies seem to be stuck on. In particular, my favorite of the week is Entourage. How appropriate for a minivan! Plus it has won more safety awards than any other minivan so your whole entourage can ride in the Entourage with confidence.
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