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Since Motley Fool has named 2011 “The Year of the Spin-Off,” we have covered a number of spin-off branding efforts, with companies making a confusing mess of their brands. Corporate spin-offs have led to brand spin-outs for companies like Marathon and Motorola. Sara Lee is doing it right. The company is keeping its core food …
Descriptive names can be tempting. The Association of International Automobile Manufacturers is different in the same old way again. Today they announced they are the Association of Global Automakers, which from 1975 to 1990 was known as Automobile Importers of America. Oh, and they have a new logo made of interlocking swooshes in varying shades …
Descriptive Names Are Not Brands–Global Automakers Read More »
A new dead brand as another venerable name slips into the past. The once great General Foods brand has been dropped from the last product Maxwell House Coffee (will that brand survive the decade?) Once one of the biggest brands in the grocery store, General Foods died slowly through acquisition. The generic nature of the …
Bloomberg News is reporting that the KFC brand is defeating all other fast food brands for dominance in China. By getting in early, tailoring its menu to local tastes (hamburgers are foreign, while fried chicken is well accepted), and hiring local decision makers, KFC stores in China contribute 36% of parent company Yum’s global operating …
Advertising Age reports this week on the growing goat brands in advertising trend. It’s an odd aspect of our creative industry that copying is so common. One area where follow-the-leader is rampant is in naming. Brand names should be distinctive above all, but I often get naming project requests like: “I want a name like …
Today’s Wall Street Journal Law Blog has an interesting article on naming laws and statutes. This is an area I have covered a time or two from a branding perspective. Naming anything is actually an act of persuasion–your name says something about your company, product or idea for a new law or policy. It’s no …
Naming Is Persuading: The Commercial and Political Power of Brand Names Read More »
“Brands are how we sort out the cesspool.” This famous quote from Eric Schmidt, President of Google, gives us insight into the importance of brands and how Google uses brand names when determining what search results to offer in response to customer queries. How do you know a word is a brand? Google codes up …
Interpublic’s hyper-local media agency Geomentum (whose brand name was created by Merriam Associates last year), was selected by MEDIA magazine as a specialty agency of the year for 2010. The awards was based on the company’s strategic vision, innovation and industry leadership. A profile of Geomentum and its achievements will appear in the January issue …
The days when Madmen sipped and smoked their way up and down Madison Avenue are long gone, but some dead brands of that era (and others) are going on sale December 8th at the Waldorf Hotel in New York. A new breed of madmen have collected and will sell 150 brands from yesteryear. UPDATE: The …
The blogosphere is up in arms that the Facebook brand may own the word “Face.” The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office issued Facebook a Notice of Allowance, granting them a trademark on the word “Face”. Trademarking of common English words is actually rather common. The USPTO generally grants trademarks on common words used in uncommon …
Trademarking Face: Facebook Brand Might Own the Word Read More »