06.13.08
Posted in Branding, Name Winners, Trademarks at 9:52 am by Athol
One of the advantages of having “first mover” advantage in any industry is the fact that you can sometimes legally tie up a good name which later would otherwise be judged to be generic - and therefore non-registrable. Such is the case with the name TopRank® for search engine optimization and marketing services. They have recently been blogging about how they have to be aggressive in protecting this name, especially in an online environment (the only field for which they have the trademark).
If the USPTO did their literature search today, they would see the words top and rank (or ranking) are surely widely used and therefore generic. But it is too late. Someone moved fast and was smart, although it really is a difficult name to protect and to own as a brand, since people have strong existing expectations of the words, before they are even educated to the fact that it is someone’s trademark. And there are many ways around it. And what is the industry generic way of saying getting a top ranking if top rank is a specific trademark?
So this award goes to them for trying to protect the name. Not for picking a name that is not unique enough. This is one of many cases I have recently run into, which is why I was reminded (writing as The Name Critic at Brighter Naming) to select Rollerblade® for recent analysis. They are a case study example of how to do it right. To protect the name Rollerblade, they told the industry and the press that the generic descriptor for the product category was In-Line Skates. For all I know (and strongly suspect) they made up In-Line Skates afterwards. Doesn’t matter.. the rest of the world has to describe their products as In-Line Skates, and can only use the term Rollerblade in its proper legal brand (now of the Nordica ski company) sense.
Similarly, in the biotech field, Genentech® is almost a generic if it was first used today, instead of the strong brand and category leader it has become. As an early mover (very early), they have polarized the rest of the word away from names using Gene and Technology…. which so many still dream of.. the basic descriptors for many of them.
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06.05.08
Posted in Branding, Language Fun at 8:55 am by Athol
In this modern world of super brands, isn’t it amazing how we take any name or logo for granted once it has been properly seared into our gray matter? My first award has to go to the relatively younger brand of Starbucks. I say the name, you smell the coffee. You walk down the street, you can feel the pull just from the decor. But what about that mermaid? What is she doing in the logo? Is she the star who gets paid the big bucks?
And then there is the old classic American Express card. A symbol of American wealth and stature for many years - personified by a Roman Gladiator! 
My history isn’t very good though I do know the Romans traveled a lot and conquered many lands. But not the Americas. How come it is not the Roman Express card? Has this Roman become one of us, just like Ellen Degeneres calls him “one of my people” in her commercial?
Now what logo are you going to use with your new company name?
P.S. Know any other great examples?
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05.14.08
Posted in Language Fun, Rotten Names at 3:08 pm by Athol
There is plenty of places for successful abstract names in branding. But to have an abstract name that you can barely pronounce and worse, is very, very difficult to read in most fonts and almost anyone’s handwriting, that is really stupid.
No wonder EBay is suing Craigslist! Their own classified offering might even work if it just had a name intelligible to western ears, especially one with as much recognition as Craigslist (even though Craig himself didn’t want this name to stay on the door…. luckily wiser heads prevailed).
So we know that Ebay copied the classified ad idea from Craigslist, and the dots in the logo from Google, but we are not sure from which monkey-speak they copied the name. (We do not intentionally mean to offend Japanese character names here… just this name is not for the Japanese market). But they ended up with a very difficult name to type and read, let alone relate to.
Why couldn’t they just copy themselves and call me to sell them the domain KeenBay.com? At least you can read and spell and say it.. even on a quickly scribbled note.
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05.05.08
Posted in Branding, Great Names, Name Winners at 4:11 pm by Athol
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.
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05.02.08
Posted in Branding, Education, Language Fun at 2:43 pm by Athol
Reading blogs and sharing notes about names is fun for many, but it is also nice to get together and share stories and ideas over breakfast sometimes. I spoke up once too often at some of the Business Marketing Association’s round table breakfasts, so now I am personally the speaker next week (May 7th) 
in Palo Alto. Let’s have some fun. Business doesn’t have to be boring. When the emotions flow the creativity does too.
Here is the link to sign up. No payment till you show up.. but mostly you just have to pay for what you eat. Bring a story or question to share. Maybe your name idea will win an award.
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04.21.08
Posted in Rotten Names at 9:13 pm by Athol
Yahoo recently announced they are offering voice search capabilities so that users of Blackberry devices (and similar) can speak their requests and get an email reply via Yahoo’s mobile oneSearch engine. Unlike the competing ChaCha where humans answer the requests, do the search and send the results, everything for Yahoo is handled automatically via technology from a company called vlingo. That is right.. another bunch of techies trying to be clever and spelling their name without a capital letter. Good luck.. it will drive editors nuts.. and so they will be in foul mood when writing about you. And what are they to do if a sentence starts with the name?
Did your mother give you a name with a lower case? Of course not. Names are proper nouns. They should always start with a capital letter. Make the logo lowercase - if you must - or if you are paying Landor a lot to design your new look. But keep your name in lower case at your own risk. Cisco tried it years ago.. and they perhaps had more justification than others since this name was the back end slice of San Francisco. But then they grew up.
Imagine trying to read an analyst’s report on companies to watch, even later a Wall Street analyst’s, and your name doesn’t get flagged or indexed since it was passed over by man and machine all for the want of an uppercase letter.
Vlingo probably has great technology or Yahoo would not have hooked up with them. Their name potentially is very powerful and appropriate, but only when people know it is a name and not some common word.
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04.18.08
Posted in Language Fun, Name Origins at 7:26 am by Athol
One of the fun parts of naming is discovering new roots and meanings every day. I must have been asleep at the wheel to not know that Nevada is from the Spanish word “snowfall”.
There is snow in the mountains and the north, but enough to name the state after it? Wow. Imagine we name some winter ski parkas (that are good in snowy weather) Nevada. People will surely not get it and assume we lost all our naming marbles in the casino.
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03.31.08
Posted in Branding, Great Names at 9:02 pm by Athol
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.
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03.25.08
Posted in Rotten Names at 9:27 am by Athol
The stupidest question I get asked, usually by bright, naive would-be company founders, is should they consider the search engine rankings of a name or words first, then find the company name, or find the name first. And last week it came up a number of times, so I fear this silly virus is spreading.
So let me put it to rest here and now, and as politely as possible say: If you consider search engines first, you are flat out stupid. Consider the facts:
- Whatever clever, catchy web name you come up with for your product line, it is still only one of many web search terms.
- Whatever name you come up with, I can put it in the title or keywords of my web pages and score as high as you (or better).
- Whatever name yo come up with, I can make a webpage with that same key phrase and score as hight as you (or better).
- Whatever name you come up with, if it is a popular search term, it is probably generic so you cannot trademark it.
- Whatever name you come up with, it is almost impossible to get consumer or business brand awareness, since humans are so brand-centric.
- Whatever name you come up with that is popular with search engines, will also be popular as a general search term and you will be home alone, lost on the internet.
- Consider where you would go to buy a CD, a computer, a pair of shoes online. Really..you wouldn’t go to cd.com, computer.com or shoes.com (respectively) so why would your clients go to the generic for your industry.
If you want to sell scientific text books online, you could own the domain scientifictextboooks.com (it is for sale, and they are only asking $1,400). But how could you make this a brand? And how would you compete against the big brands? So please, first type this term in a search engine and see who else comes up. Even Target stores comes up early in this search, and that is far from their core business. Plus what happens if you really find your audience are searching for technical books instead?
Enough said. Go get a great unique short brand name that you can own and protect. Then do your search engine marketing properly.
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03.15.08
Posted in Domain Names at 8:06 pm by Athol
It amused me to read the recent Business Week article about YouTorrent, the new index site to give the video and music companies heartache. Can you imagine someone who is running such a popular site, as he hides from the law, actually ponied up $20,000 to buy the domain YouTorrent.com? When you are providing a free path to contraband, and not charging for it, wouldn’t any old name have worked? Why did he have to do guerilla marketing off YouTube and BitTorrent? With millions of hits a month, that he is self-funding with no revenue model in site, this especially doesn’t make sense.
But then again, neither does it make sense to me when every few months someone tries to buy the domain Roseann.com off me for under $500. My sister, Roseann, and I, once ran a business with this name. Plus there are a number of congresswoman with this name, and it is of course close to the name of comedienne Roseanne (Barr) who is always on some rerun TV channel somewhere. To make sure I wasn’t too biased, I had GoDaddy appraise the domain and they came back with a range of $6,822 to $17,000! Me, I’d be happy to get half the lower end of that range… but in the meantime it is worth more to our family.
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