Last Fall this billboard ad promoted the wildly popular Panda Express restaurants.
What caught my eye is the verbing of the brand name that some say is a no-no.
This is not a black and white issue for me (pun intended), and I have spilled more than a bit of digital ink on the
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
Las Vegas has a welcoming brand, probably best known by the nearly decade old famous and iconic slogan: What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.
LVCVA owns it for gaming machines, slot machine services, and “promoting the Las Vegas, Nevada area as a destination for leisure and business travelers.”
If you’re not
Welcome to another edition of trademark stories that are inspired by billboard advertisements:
This one was captured for obvious reasons, if you’re familiar with our interest in brandverbing:
Yes and no are at opposite ends of the spectrum. North Pole, South Pole. Night and day. Win, loss. Black, white. Available, unavailable. Protectable, unprotectable. Infringing, non-infringing. They represent a binary proposition, like a traditional light switch with two settings: on and off.
My daughter loves the yes end of the spectrum; no, not
Uber, the popular brand that helps people arrange prompt ground transportation, is now also being called a verb. The Star Tribune recently reported that the founder of iHail, a recent competitor of Uber in the Twin Cities market, would like to achieve the same anointed status: “I want iHail to become a verb,
FUSE 2015 is off to being yet another amazing, inspiring event for brand strategy and design professionals. The keynote speaker for day one was Eric Quint, Chief Design Officer of 3M, who delivered a very interesting presentation called: “Future Forward: Beyond Design Tourism.”
Little did Mr. Quint know that he set the table nicely
We’ve made a lot of friends in the naming community over the last six years, special congrats to one of them, Anth Shore over at Operative Words, whose work in naming Jaunt was recently featured in a New York Times article called: The Weird Science of Naming New Products.
It is a fascinating
Samsung appears to be the most recent brand to board the brandverbing bandwagon with its Galaxy Note 4 advertising campaign, asking the critical question: Do You Note?
Samsung has federally-registered in the U.S. the trademark GALAXY NOTE for smart phones, mobile phones, and tablet computers — note the absence of a disclaimer of NOTE,
Diageo, the Tanqueray brand owner is currently running billboard ads in the Twin Cities as part of its “Tonight We Tanqueray” ad campaign. A couple of years back when the campaign first was announced, Diageo explained it this way:
“One of the world’s most awarded
