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—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

Tiger Woods drives by Allison.jpg

The impact of the Tiger Woods scandal in branding can be viewed from two different perspectives. The first perspective comes from the point of view of the companies that paid Woods to endorse their products. The second perspective is how the personal brand of Tiger Woods will be impacted as the smoke clears from this series of events.

Two professors in University of California-Davis’ Economics Department attempted to measure the impact from the first perspective. They claimed that shareholders in publicly traded companies that Woods endorsed lost $5-12 billion in the weeks that followed the car accident in Florida that set off the scandal. They undoubtedly have an interesting perspective, but there are limiting factors in their research. However, an undisputable fact of the Tiger Woods scandal is that it put a lot of brand management teams in a very delicate situation. Brand managers at firms where Woods served as an endorser had to consider how their brands would be perceived by their target consumers if they were to continue the relationship. It is not an enviable position. 

When a brand chooses to link arms with a celebrity endorser, it must consider which celebrities will be effective endorsers. It is essential to select celebrities that will positively contribute to revenue growth and profitability. I believe that a celebrity endorser is most effective when the target consumer perceives them as attractive or desirable in some fashion and the product is related to the expertise of the celebrity. For example, Michael Jordan was an effective endorser of both Nike and Gatorade because of his status as an elite athlete and the fact that both brands are related to athletic performance. Gisele Bundchen is an effective endorser for Dolce & Gabbana fragrances because scent is an important aspect of appearance and she is the embodiment of phenomenal appearance. She would be far less effective as a celebrity endorser for the Toyota Camry. With regards to Tiger Woods, he is most effective in endorsing Nike Golf products and any other golf related brands. His effect is diminished for brands like Gillette and AT&T.Continue Reading The Roar of Tiger Woods in Branding