Over the past dozen years, we’ve been admiring Rapala’s annual creative billboard campaign that continues to maintain the same eye-catching look and feel.

Love the white canvas, the red stylized Rapala brand name, the Original Floating lure, and a creative and often humorous attention-getting term or phrase in black ink, sandwiched in between (and hooked

Hotels, Ice Cream, and Shoes as Canvases for Great Brands

Seth Godin has written about how Nike is a great brand because we can imagine what a Nike hotel would look like.

So, let me ask a slightly weirder question: If Nike were an ice cream flavor, what would it taste like?

Welcome back to another edition of Merely Informational and Incapable Marks.

The above neighborhood Applebee’s is on my usual route to going anywhere from our home, so I’m predicting I’ve passed by well more than 10,000 times.

The temporary “Dining Room Open” signage is a recent addition from a few months ago, when Minnesota

We’ve covered many trademark and brand management themes over the last eleven years, this falls in the category: The Right-Sizing of Trademark Protection?

As reports emerge about the recent Coronavirus fear driving people to clear store shelves to stock their home pantries and freezers, a Hot Pockets TV ad hit me.

Clearly consumer packaged

Since the origin of trademark use guidelines, there has been immutable, black and white legal direction against using brand names (and the trademarks that protect them), as nouns or verbs. If you’ve seen more flexible rules, please share.

Yet, marketers have recognized the power verbs have over nouns and adjectives.

Highlighting the 

One of my friends, when playing blackjack and asked to “cut the deck” after it has been shuffled, consistently admonishes without hesitation: “Thin to win.”

Given the trademark story for today, you may end up believing the opposite.

A 6-year trademark fight between Frito-Lay and Real Foods ended this month.

Frito-Lay opposed Real Foods’

When thinking about brands comprising religious matter, I think of EZEKIEL 4:9.

The EZEKIEL 4:9 brand has been registered as a trademark for bread since 1990.

The brand owner had to clear some chaff from the Principal Register to do so, threshing this EZEKIEL as abandoned, and gaining this EZEKIEL by assignment.

It presently

Let’s all hope that the Supplemental Trademark Register is not on the death watch.

It appears though to be on life support, at times, and especially with the USPTO’s heightened focus on “merely informational” matter, including laudatory messages.

This is a common basis for registration refusal nowadays: “Merely informational matter fails to function as a