-Mark Prus, Principal, NameFlash Name Development
Mark Cuban held a variety of jobs in his youth including selling garbage bags door-to-door and being a bartender, a disco dancing instructor, and a party promoter. But one thing that frustrated him was bank overdraft fees. Now he’s helping to fund an app that claims it can help
Boys baseball occupied a fair portion of my evenings last week and this past weekend, a game where almost everyone has at least heard: The tie goes to the runner (when it comes to running the bases anyway — because when it comes to the final score the game continues until someone wins, even if
Dan sees blue ovals, I see and enjoy branding irony — especially irony that appears unintended.
Take the example to the right, an ad for EagleBank, a community bank operating in the Washington, D.C. area.
While mingling with more than 9,000 other trademark lawyers from around the world who have descended upon
The strategic use of color can make all the difference in the world — particularly the trademark world — when creating the visual identity for a brand, as color can be a very helpful legal tool in communicating the brand’s underlying meaning.
And the meaning of a brand and its trademark, or a portion of its trademark, can have many legal implications, including but not limited to whether the mark is descriptive or suggestive, strong or weak, inherently distinctive or not, whether a disclaimer might be required, whether or not a likelihood of confusion exists, and whether or not there is a valid fair use defense.
Especially when a brand name is composed of compressed or telescoped words, the intended meaning behind a brand name can be lost on consumers without the careful use of color combinations:
Without the benefit of the colored-version of the current PETSMART logo on the left, how would word-of-mouth discussions regarding the brand go, if all one had access to was the black/white version on the right? Would the PETSMART brand name be pronounced as PET SMART, PETS MART, or PETS SMART (the last option being the telescoped version where the compressed mark shares a letter between the two words that form it)? Would the bouncing ball punctuation alone be enough to steer the meaning toward PET SMART and away from the descriptive PETS MART?
The answers to these questions have important legal implications since PETS MART is likely descriptive, weak, and susceptible to the fair use defense, while PET SMART or PETS SMART is likely suggestive, strong, and less susceptible to fair use. So, when the words are compressed, and spacing cannot answer these critical questions, there is a strong legal incentive to clarify for consumers that the elements of the compound mark are PET SMART, not PETS MART, as the coloring shown above accomplishes.
To be sure, the smart use of color is not the only tool available to influence the meaning of a compound word mark. Upper and lower case lettering can help convey valuable information as well. Staying with the PETSMART example, there was a time when the brand’s visual identity looked like this on the company’s website:
Because all the lettering in this depiction of the visual identity is the same color, the smaller size of the "s" between PET and MART probably create a pretty strong argument that the compound mark is PetsMart, not PetSmart. Interestingly, an even earlier treatment of the logo uses the red/blue color combination to communicate the PET SMART meaning, but it is somewhat visually contradicted by the diminutive appearance of the MART element, as shown here.
So, who do you suppose had more influence on the various transitions of the PETSMART logo over time, legal or marketing?
Finally, for a stroll down memory lane on Duets with a couple of other posts from the past, relating to visual identity, see below the jump.Continue Reading When a Brand’s Visual Identity Has Serious Trademark Implications
—Karl Schweikart & Susan Hopp, both of 45 Degrees/Minneapolis
I bet you’ve noticed this long-time naming trend: Having the word “dog” in the names of brands that have nothing at all to do with dogs or pets or even animals. What gives?
A quick Google search of the term “black dog” turned up these
Just so you know, it about pushed me over the edge to have a blog post title with no capitalization. Not even one letter. In other words, all minuscules, no majuscules. It doesn’t seem right — to me anyway, as a trademark type.
Just like the first letter in the first word of a
—Dave Taylor, Taylor Brand Group
In this age of fiercely defended intellectual property, it’s tough developing even a single new product name. Registered trademarks guard their brand territory in every industry and fence out their competitors. Launching a new product name can take months or years of name generating, testing, and legal process.
Done well, a sound naming strategy can help establish your brand as the high ground in the marketplace battlefield, where it will be aspired to, imitated and competed against by lesser brands struggling to reach the top.
Done poorly, product names can have awkward connotations, comprehension issues, or nagging legal problems that will cause confusion among your prospects and customers, and pay for new furniture in your attorney’s beach house.
Yet amid the difficulty of getting even one product name right, Honda Motors has gracefully created a whole family of product brands that couldn’t have been better if not a single circle R stood in their way. Consider their two most popular models, the Civic and the Accord. Link them together with other successful models, the Prelude, or the Pilot. Ahhh, do you feel it? There is a reassuring promise of peace and harmony that comes from not just one of those names, but all four of them. The Insight, the Fit and even the quirky Element are equally well integrated into the Honda family of pleasant, calming automobile trademarks. Each name has meaning we instantly understand, but in addition they work seamlessly together as a family of brands.Continue Reading In the Brand Name Game, Honda Gets it Done the Hard Way
One good thing leads to another, or perhaps, vice versa (then again, maybe not):
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Odds are, you probably are familiar with the logo on the left, but maybe not the history behind the brand and company it represents. Apparently, a guy named Jimmy John Liataud founded Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches in Charleston, Illinois, in 1983, and since then, has grown his successful franchised restaurant business to more than 1,000 locations in 38 states, including many in Minnesota.
And, I’m guessing most of you haven’t encountered the logo on the right, so, hat tip to Ed, who guessed right that it would capture my interest. Apparently, a second generation family business called Jimmy’s Johnnys was founded in the northern suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota, four years before Jimmy John’s came into existence, all the way back in 1979.
Branding conflict? Trademark problem? Antitrust problem via brand extension and vertical integration (for tongue-in-cheek reasons that will become more apparent far, far below)?
Need more information?
What if Jimmy’s Johnnys isn’t selling sandwiches at all, but assuming its position in the food chain, by helping dispose of them, through this business (answer below the jump):Continue Reading And, Here’s . . . Jimmy’s Johnnys
"The name is Bond, James Bond," said Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Daniel Craig, among others, countless times in film, as part of the famous 007 series. An ideal name for a secret agent. A name and line not easily forgotten, as brands and taglines should be.
And then, there are some names you’d like to forget, but can’t, especially if they are associated with personal injury lawyers, who probably "suk" even more than trademark lawyers (who merely have been dubbed the most basic figure), right?
Well, using Dan’s post from Friday, as a catapult (or, perhaps a hole-digger) for discussion, I’m thinking the jury is still out on 3 being the magic number, at least as it pertains to the 3 letters forming a rather rare surname (Suk) and the same number of words forming a curious (and hopefully misdescriptive) law firm name (Suk Law Firm), so, sorry Dan, I’m not sure there is any way to pull a rabbit out of the hat on this troubled tripartite branding combination:
Seeing the signage here, I’m thinking that any new or temporary receptionists at this law firm automatically require more intense phonetic training than your average law firm receptionist. In fact, this little gem (hat tip and photo credit to Max) probably rivals those spotted by Mark Prus in his recent guest post entitled: "Name Development Faux Pas, a.k.a. What Were They Thinking?!"
Ironically, the tagline for the Suk Law Firm is composed of these 3 words too: "Think About It."
So, I’m assuming they followed their own advice and did, but nevertheless, it probably came down the same way the Drury Inns name did, since the surnames in question no doubt have a great deal of goodwill associated with and emotional attachment to their founders. Might a naming consultant, nevertheless have said, forgetaboutit?
In any event, one of the things I’d be inclined to think about is how the brand name might sound when spoken, especially in a world where word-of-mouth marketing is key, and also how it might be perceived by those in the relevant public, given the possible truncation from its four-letter cousin. Apparently Suk, when the surname meaning is intended, sounds like "cook" or "book," not "pluck" or "stuck." Oh, the things phonetic punctuation symbols can and should be used to do, to help guide the intended meaning by signaling long and short vowel sounds!
On a related note, it reminds me of the unintended meanings that can result when critical spacing is omitted, as was the case, between the branded words "LA MER" to yield LAMER.
Although mispronouncing the Suk surname may be bad enough, when one examines the derivation of the name, it doesn’t appear to improve much on the meaning front either, since Suk apparently is not only a nickname for a "powerful, unyielding man," but also a "stubborn, awkward one". Hmmm, it’s all beginning to make sense now.
For those with any modicum of lingering interest, the Trademark Office’s treatment of SUK appears below the jump.Continue Reading Tripartite Branding Trouble: The Name is Suk?
These kinds of signs — that appear to single out Rollerblade brand in-line skate loyalists — are all over the place. This one happens to be in the parking garage I use in downtown Minneapolis.
To understand why the Rollerblade brand may find itself in this perilous position, read on, here.
For some additional reading on the related question of verbing brands
