Welcome to another edition of Single Letter Brands. This one was uncovered in the far southwest corner of the country, if you haven’t been, I highly recommend a visit:
Q is a casino/resort near Yuma, Arizona. Here’s a question, what does Q stand for?
In this context, near Yuma, we’re not talking this Q
The United States Patents Quarterly has been a resource used by intellectual property lawyers for a very long time. Most of the decisions published in USPQ are patent decisions, but there are a large number of trademark decisions too, especially those decided by the USPTO and TTAB.
As the image above reveals, an admittedly weathered
Here is a blast from the past: The D-Word: What Ever You Do, Don’t “Describe” Your Brand!
And, here is something a little more recent that I found on a recent business trip to Las Vegas:
So, let’s file this one in the AlphaWatch file.
There appears to be no tiring of single-letter branding.
Welcome to another addition of AlphaWatch:
What do you suppose the “M” is supposed to mean in M Burger? Looks like a mystery to me, based on the lack of any brand “story” on the website.
Perhaps “M” stands for the “multitude” of unrelated third parties providing restaurant services that use
The letter "W" is an interesting one. Besides being the twenty-third letter in the alphabet, it is the only one having more than one syllable; it has three — unless it is pronounced with two: dub-yah.
It is more than a bit ironic that — as a truncated single-letter brand — W, in most cases, has three times the syllables
We have been following the truncation trend to single-letter branding symbols for some time now.
Visa appears to be heading in this direction with the relatively new V logo:
Based on trademark filings at the USPTO, it appears Visa began using this single-letter V logo by itself back in 2008 with the launch of
Welcome to another edition of AlphaWatch. In addition to the prominent use of capital letter G on the front of these energy drink cans, the last line on them reads:
"IT’S GAZZU!! HEY, GIMME A G."
I thought that Gatorade’s "What is G?" question already had been answered here?
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
It has been some time since we have visited AlphaWatch, and today we turn our attention to an ad I spied on ESPN’s website this week:
This takes me back to law school and a Latin phrase common in legal parlance, res ipsa loquitur, which is commonly translated, “the thing
Welcome to another edition of AlphaWatch (the next one in our queue), where we explore the reach of single-letter trademarks, this time focusing on the letter Q and the single-letter branding cues it might suggest to consumers:
Are you able to name the un-truncated version of this single-letter mark and brand?
My daughter could. The answer is below the jump.Continue Reading Taking Branding Cues from Q in the Single-Letter Trademark Queue
Gatorade’s efforts to re-brand as “G” have been a dismal failure. It seems as if the brand management staff at Gatorade consumed a few too many cold beverages while making this decision, and I’m not referring to refrigerated Gatorades.
The history of the G re-brand has its roots in 2007. Unit sales were flat in 2007 compared with 2006, after three years of double digit growth, according to market research firm Information Resources Inc (IRI). More poor results followed in 2008 despite product innovations and brand revitalization efforts (here and here). In January 2009, Gatorade started the G re-brand. The G re-brand has done nothing to improve Gatorade’s bottom line. In fact, it has harmed the bottom line.
The decision to modify a brand name should not be taken lightly. A brand name communicates the essence of the brand to consumers. According to Rick Baer, Professor of Marketing at Thunderbird School of Global Management and former Global Brand Manager with Colgate-Palmolive and Dial Corporation, a brand name “should conjure up all the associations and images you want for your brand”. Does G accomplish that? The answer is a resounding no.Continue Reading What’s G? For Gatorade, G is Gruesome