I’ve been meaning to write about a TV commercial for a while, but I keep forgetting to do it.
Perhaps I need the very product being advertised in the commercial, because what gained my attention was the clever tagline following the brand name: Prevagen. The Name to Remember.
Given the goods being sold, it
How about a little levity for your weekend preparations?
There has been a great deal of discussion among those interested in the brand new and increasingly controversial University of California logo appearing on the right above.
Mashable’s discussion of the online branding outrage is here. Berkeleyside coverage is here. And, News Fix coverage
A day doesn’t go by without my GoogleAlert spotting another online reference to some purported example of “trademark bullying.”
It seems like just about any private assertion of trademark infringement will trigger the use of the term as a very public knee-jerk response.
As you know, we’ve spilled a lot of ink, writing about the
There once was a day when being an "artisan" meant something: "A person or company that makes a high-quality, distinctive product in small quantities, usually by hand using traditional methods: artisan foods."
The key elements of an artisan’s handiwork seem to be hand-crafted, distinctive products of high-quality that are produced in small numbers. Perhaps bread from the local bakery, craft beer from the corner brewpub, unique cheese from a small dairy farm, and for the less edible, one-of-a-kind jewelry items, custom furniture pieces, and hand-painted household knickknacks.
But, nowadays, even a "major online service provider" in the field of intellectual property filings appears interested in suggesting or emulating the qualities of an artisan’s handiwork: Artisan IP.
Meanwhile, back to our discussion of "artisan" foods, I’m thinking it’s safe to say that when Domino’s Pizza adopts the term for its latest fast food pizza delivery offering, when Starbucks employs the term in naming its breakfast sandwich offering, and when Frito-Lay chooses Artisan Recipes as a trademark for its latest pre-packaged tortilla chip offering, true artisans must be in desperate search of a new title to reclaim their identity:
Foodette Reviews also has noticed the incongruity of mass merchandise national chains adopting the term. I just don’t think it makes one a "snob" to be bothered by the misdescriptive use.
Yet, I suppose "artisan" still means something, we’re just not sure what, at the moment, since it appears to be a moving target, as Nancy Friedman recently noted on her truly artisanal Fritinancy Blog (not to be confused with Artesians, of course).
According to Grub Street New York (hat tip to Nancy on this find), what appears to be certain is that the marketing cachet of the word "artisan" began its rapid demise into "meaninglessness" about a decade ago when the co-opting by "giant companies" began, in order to "hawk fast-food burgers and delivery pizza."
As a trademark type, given the larger-than-life bandwagon of those using the term "artisan" in connection with pizza (WeightWatchers, Wedge, Pitfire, Roundtable, Mario’s, Max & Leo’s, Mazzio’s, and Freschetta, among others), I’m left wondering whether Artisan Pizza is the next Brick Oven Pizza — namely, a new category of pizza, rendering the term generic, and free for all to use, assuming of course, the use is not false or misleading to consumers.
Last, but not least, for an excerpt from a 2003 Office Action from the USPTO refusing registration of ARTISAN as a trademark for "frozen pizza," based on deceptive misdescriptiveness, see below the jump.Continue Reading Artisan Puffery?
—Nancy Friedman, Chief Wordworker at Wordworking and author of Fritinancy
Imagine my surprise—as a name developer, beauty-brand fan, and trademark aficionada—when I saw this sign in my Oakland, California, neighborhood back in March.
It wasn’t the prospect of a new nail spa that piqued my interest; our local commercial strip already has dozens of mani-pedi
—Nancy Friedman, Chief Wordworker at Wordworking and author of Fritinancy
I’m a native Angeleno who’s lived for many years in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was happy when the San Francisco Giants won the World Series last year, but I’ll never outgrow my childhood enthusiasm for the Los Angeles Dodgers. So it was with
—Nancy Friedman, Chief Wordworker at Wordworking; and author of Fritinancy
Like you, I’m counting the days. Unlike you, perhaps, my countdown ends Thursday, with Festivus, the holiday “for the rest of us” popularized by Seinfeld more than a decade ago and kept alive through endless syndication—and through some impressive efforts on the marketing and
In this edition of AlphaWatch, it appears another major brand owner is flirting with truncation and wants to be g too (of course, not to be confused with G2 or even G for that matter), despite the fact that the products associated with each brand might be considered complementary (assuming you’re looking to break a sweat):
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So, guess who appears to be working on developing their own family or series of lil’ g marks (of course, not to be confused with another’s G Series)? Visual answer below the jump:Continue Reading GeeWhiz: Another Edition of Trademark AlphaWatch
—Nancy Friedman, Chief Wordworker at Wordworking; and author of Fritinancy
“All the good ones are taken!”
Without fail, that’s the lament I hear most frequently from my naming clients. They’re not complaining about legally available trademarks—they’re talking about Internet domains. They want short ones: five letters would be nice. (Uh-huh.) They want
There is a growing interest and, quite frankly, a dogged persistence among branding professionals to select brand names that have the ability and potential to be “verbed.” This makes trademark attorney types nervous and those of the “Dr. No” variety actually become unglued.
So, why the emphasis or fascination with verbs anyway? The answer apparently can be found in the definition of a verb: “A verb is a doing word (helping, grabbing).” This feature is appealing to marketers. In addition, some argue that “verbing” a brand extends its reach through effective “word of mouth branding.” Some feel so strongly about the marketing benefit they argue that “having the public utter your company name as a verb is like going to heaven without the inconvenience of dying. Getting ‘verbed’ is the ultimate accomplishment for any brand — the marketer’s Shangri-la.”
As marketing maven Seth Godin argued as early as 2005: “Nouns just sit there, inanimate lumps. Verbs are about wants and desires and wishes.” Given that limited binary choice, David Cameron’s recent and thoughtful “Brandverbing Brands” post on his OnBrands Blog, asks a reasonable question: “Wouldn’t you rather have your brand in the latter category?”
I’m wondering and you might be wondering too, what happened to door number three? We’ll get to that, patience.Continue Reading Just Verb It? A Legal Perspective on Using Brands As Verbs: Part I
