Branding Strategy Insider

When Trademarks and Dictionaries Clash

It’s no wonder that dictionary-makers have trouble with trademarks. There are legal repercussions as well as conflicting loyalties over what actually constitutes a word.

Dictionary-makers want to respect trademark ownership, yet their job is to record words and their usage as accurately as possibly. Some dictionaries, like the jumbo Oxford English Dictionary or its baby sister, the Concise Oxford Dictionary, have skirted the problem by banning proper nouns altogether, whether they be the names of persons, places, or branded products.

Dictionary makers often ask: If you start adding proper nouns to the dictionary word list, where do you stop? Why include entries for Aqua-Lung and Xerox, as Encarta College Dictionary does, but not Kodak? Should the decision be based on social importance or frequency of use?

We would argue that proper nouns in general and brand names in particular are words, and there’s no reason in principle why they should not legitimately be part of the overall word stock. Moreover, dictionary-users want them, which is why they’re included in many dictionaries around the globe.

Great Moments in Naming: Academy Awards 'Oscar'

Where Did “Oscar” Get its Name? We don’t mean Oscar Wilde or Oscar Hammerstein. We mean that 8-pound gold statuette so beloved in Hollywood.

Most nicknames have obvious sources, but not Oscar, as the awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are commonly known.

For instance, the Tony Awards on Broadway are nicknamed in honor of actress/director Antoinette Perry, who died in 1946. The Tony Awards began the next year. Television’s Emmy awards get their moniker from a pioneer TV engineer and the third president of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He suggested “Immy,” a term commonly used around 1950 for the early image orthicon camera. The name stuck and was later modified to Emmy, which was considered more appropriate for a female symbol.

But Oscar’s origin is shrouded in showbiz lore.

Online Naming Facing Major Change

Prepare for a messy new world of domain names. ICANN, the little-known organization that oversees the Internet, plans to start selling the rights to anything from dot-soup to dot-nuts – a potentially unlimited number of customized new domain suffixes to compete with dot-com, dot-net, and all the other “dots” available.

Industry observers say those domains are likely to take their names from popular subjects, types of businesses, physical locations or even brand names. In other words, get ready for dot-bank, dot-airline, dot-pepsi or dot-whatever.

Companies naturally fear that if they don’t register their trademarks at the new domains, their trusted brand names could get scammed, hijacked or even held for ransom. For instance, as the Wall Street Journal reported, Marriott is said to be considering such new domains as Marriott.travel or Marriott.vacations or Marriott.nyc.

A spokesperson for the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) says it has already spent $10 million on software that will spot cyber-squatters trying to grab desirable names and ransom them to real trademark holders. How secure is that software? Will it work? No one knows, yet.

33 Tips & Tactics for Generating Names

Over the last decade we have generated new names for hundreds of companies, products and services. Here are some of the shortcuts, thought-starters and mental prods we've observed along the way.

1. Work Backwards From The Selling Proposition.
 Start by writing down an advertising headline, or a positioning statement, or a themeline for your product. Then work toward a name that reflects that marketing strategy. You have an instant coffee that tastes and smells like real ground roast. The name: TASTER’S CHOICE. Your new bath soap has so many oils and softeners that it leaves the skin silky soft to the touch. CARESS. Your chain of Mexican restaurants serves a mouth-watering range of that spicy cuisine. THE WHOLE ENCHILADA.

2. Spell It A Different Way.
A gelatin dessert came out as JELL-O. A fruit-based drink for kids came out as FROOT. An intentionally misspelled word could become your product’s name. Or company name: TOYS R US.

3. Go Against The Grain.
Study the competition. If everyone else is high-tech, think high-touch. If all the category names seem masculine try feminine. A hospital in Arkansas found that its competitors all had serious, straightforward names for their maternity centers — The Maternity Center or The Birthing Center. So this hospital called theirs STORK & COMPANY. The community loved it. There’s a long list of cars with 3-syllable names all ending with the letter “a”: Achieva, Aurora, Bravada, Celica, Corolla, Cressida, Integra, Maxima, Miata, Previa, Tredia. Et Cetera. If you were branding the next new model, maybe you’ll go against the grain.

4. Generate First, Judge Later.
Get yourself (or your task force) started by generating as many different names as you can. Write everything down. There are no bad ideas, yet. Save the judging for later. In a group session, try this penalty for saying, “What a lousy idea.” That person has to produce two more ideas for names.

5. Go For Quantity.
Don’t fall in love with a short list of two or three possible names. Develop lots of names. In a typical trademark search, you’ll lose at least 8 of every 10 names you generate. (Sometimes more.)

6. Try A Random Idea.
Creative consultant Roger von Oech suggests opening your mind to things that have nothing to do with a problem you’re working on. Open your dictionary to page 133 and pick the third word. Make that word relate to your naming need. (Could you use it as a metaphor?) Write down the name of your favorite sports team. How would it impact the project you’re working on? Random ideas can make your mind blossom.

Naming Research Q & A

Can you really test a new name with customers and prospects? What can you expect to learn from the process? To answer those questions, we sat down with Sandra Bauman, PhD., founder of Bauman Research and Consulting.

Over the last 20 years, Dr. Bauman has managed 250 studies for clients in corporate image. Among her clients are Samsung, Bayer, Stryker Orthopaedics, Brandtrust, Thomson Healthcare, Pfizer, J.H. Cohn and Colangelo.

Q: Sandra, let’s start with a question many clients ask: Is it really possible to research a new name with customers or prospects?

Of course! But as with any research endeavor, it’s critical that the research be designed very carefully to get the most meaningful – and unbiased – results. As the saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out.” Researching names can be tricky – it requires a thorough understanding of the objectives and a carefully crafted series of questions that allow respondents to free-think about the names as well as rate the names for appeal, appropriateness, connection to corporate values and other criteria.

One of the ways that research can be most helpful is in uncovering associations or connections that people make of the names to other products, companies or situations. Every name communicates something (and if that something is nothing, that’s a problem!). Research can show what first comes to mind when a respondent hears or sees a name, what other things the name sounds like or reminds them of, and most importantly, what they think a product or company by that name would stand for, be, do. By evaluating these reactions we can get a sense of which names are doing the best job at communicating what we’d ideally like, and which are disasters waiting to happen.

Q: So what are the limitations? What is unrealistic to expect of name testing?

Chinese Naming Strategy Q&A

Someday, it will be the biggest consumer market in the world. No wonder that marketers are increasingly interested in Chinese naming.

With his training in classical and modern Chinese literature plus an advanced American psychology degree in bilingual memory research, Andy Chuang is the first in his family’s 1,500-year history to master not only Chinese but also English. His company, Goodcharacters.com in Fresno, California, specializes in Chinese naming and linguistic evaluation.

We sat down with Andy to talk about the rationale and the process of Chinese naming.

Q: Americans have a set of basic assumptions about how they name things. Is it true that the Chinese have a completely different orientation towards naming?

Americans typically choose existing first names for their babies. For example, John, David or Mary. However, the Chinese name their babies in the same manner that you would name a company or a product. The Chinese pick some “good characters” and put them together to form a “good meaning.”

Consider the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, as an example. Jiang is his family name. His first name, Zemin: the combination of the two characters, Ze and Min. Ze is a “pool” or “benefaction.” Min is “the people.” By putting these two together, Ze-min means “benefit to the people” or a “blessing for the people.”

Keys To Impactful Name Design

A great name should be pleasing to the ear and to the eye. So how do designers make a name look good?

We got some answers from Scott Yaw, a senior partner and managing director of Deskey Integrated Branding in Cincinnati. Scott joined Deskey in 1978 and his expertise encompasses brand strategy and identity programs. Some of Deskey’s recognizable brand design efforts include the iconic Tide detergent bull’s-eye logo, DeWalt Power Tools, Ingersoll-Rand equipment, 3M’s Post-It Notes, Brawny Paper Towels and retail packaging for Starbucks.

Q: You say that smart design is a competitive weapon. How so?

That statement actually paraphrases a principal our founder Donald Deskey said in the 1940’s, but we find it very relevant. With so many parity products and services in today’s market place, design is one strategy marketers can use to differentiate their brands and help close the sale with customers. When marketers fail to differentiate, customers will likely choose low-price. This is the start of commodity thinking and the race to the bottom begins. Great design moves both hearts and minds. Great design moves customers up to premium price points.

Q: Let’s say a client brings you a name for a new product. Describe your process for turning that name into a visual identity.

We start the identity process with a five-step analysis: (1) How the product works; (2) How and where customers use the new product; (3) What significant benefits (if any) it provides to customers; (4) The actual selling environment where the product appears; and (5) An audit and evaluation against competition.

We prefer developing unique graphic symbols and easy-to-read word mark typography for new products. Unique graphic symbols can be trademarked as a barrier against forthcoming competition. Unique graphic symbols and easy-to-read logos with ownable colors can be integrated with marketing programs to create a consistent look.

Promoting A New Name

Adopting a new company name isn’t enough. If an organization is really proud of its new moniker – and it ought to be – then promoting the new identity with all its important constituent publics is a necessity.

Here are the steps that a proud company should follow in letting its publics know who exactly it has become:

    * First, preview the new name internally.

      Give the employees the first glimpse of the new identity and the rationale behind it. These people, after all, are the keepers of the new flame. They must be supportive – the faddish term is “buy-in” – so get them in the tent early.

      This implies holding employee meetings to announce – with appropriate bells and whistles – the new name and its meaning. It means redesigning the employee intranet to reflect and herald the new name. It means distributing advertising PDFs on the campaign that will launch the new name. It means supplying coffee mugs and key rings and Lucite cubes and all that jazz to make the new name tangible.

    * Second, announce the new name externally with appropriate pomp.

Naming: The Art of Clipping

Why squander four syllables on “advertisement” when “ad” conveys the same thought in one? That’s the motivation behind Clipping – the shortening of an existing word or term.

As with many tactics in naming, this approach goes way back in language. "Influenza" was shortened to "flu. "Burger” from “hamburger.” Successfully clipped names present the core of the word.

    * Intuit, a leader in personal finance and small business accounting, was clipped from "intuitive."

    * Genuity was the new name for GTE's e-business operation. Genuity is "ingenuity," with a little off the top.

    * Teligent, a telecommunications firm, came from "intelligent." (The name Intel is often thought to be a contraction of the same word, but it was actually fashioned from "int" –integrated, plus "el" – electronics.)

    * Essent Healthcare, a for-profit hospital chain, from "essential."

Sometimes, the clipped name is a kind of shorthand slang. Jag for Jaguar, or Vette for Corvette. The goal remains the same: To communicate the essence of the formal word in an abbreviated way.

Another type of verbal pruning is called back-formation, in which an existing word is trimmed into a new, slightly altered word. Example: “Edit” was back-formed from “editor.” As linguist Jeremy Butterfield points out, back-formation has given us such common verbs as “enthuse” (from “enthusiasm”), “diagnose” (from “diagnosis”), and “emote” (from “emotion”).

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Painful Naming Lessons

How important is research in Naming? You be the judge...

1. Reebok had to backpedal after it blundered with the launch of a running shoe for women named the INCUBUS. The dictionary says an incubus is “an evil spirit believed to descend upon and have sex with women while they sleep.”

2. British shoemaker Umbro must not have been paying attention. Umbro was denounced in August 2002 as “appallingly insensitive” for using the name ZYKLON for a running shoe. That’s the same name as the lethal gas used in Nazi extermination camps during the Second World War.

3. A food company named its giant burrito a BURRADA. Big mistake. The colloquial meaning of that word is "big mistake."

4. General Motors named a new Chevrolet the BERETTA without getting permission from the Italian arms manufacturer. It cost GM $500,000 to settle the lawsuit.

5. Ford had a problem in Brazil when the PINTO flopped. The company found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for "tiny male genitals." Ford pried all the nameplates off and substituted the name Corcel, which means "horse."