Fast Company on Brand Authenticity

Some branding articles from the May 2007 issue of Fast Company

Slide show: What Makes a Brand Authentic

Who Do You Love? (The appeal -- and risks -- of authenticity)

Will the Real Juan Valdez Please Stand Up? (To evoke authenticity, marketers use many tactics. Here's how five pairs of industry rivals tackle the challenge.)

An Authenticity Timeline (From Disney's opening of Main Street USA in 1955 to user-generated content, here's a look at how authenticity has evolved over time.)

Donald, I love you on Howard, but things don't seem to be going well

Mark Cuban calls out the Donald and has this to say about what Trump could do now that he "quit" The Apprentice:

You can travel the world over and give speeches on brand dilution. Explaining how a brand that was once synonymous with the finest real estate in the world is now synonymous with a canceled TV show, water, steaks, a doll, vodka, a perfume, a game and an online University that tries to sell questionable advice and products and is one of the biggest spammers on the Internet.

Ouch. Trump held a "free" seminar here in Columbus a few months back. I signed up to go to see what it's all about, but I had to clip my toenails that night, so I didn't go.

Technorati Tags: branding, brand dilution, brand extension, Mark Cuban, Donald Trump

More on the Red Hat / Hibernate trademark hubbub

Follow up to this post. Just found Bill Dudney's post regarding the adverse reaction to Red Hat's trademark enforcement. Bill offers an excellent analysis on why the open source community reacted as it did. He also argues that "RedHat is not evil for enforcing their trademarks." Hear hear!

Again, they have every right to enforce the use of their trademarks. I’m not arguing against that at all. The issue is ownership. It is one company (and only one company) that owns the trademark. The thousands of developers that invested in groking Hibernate, JBoss etc have zero ownership in that trademark. They can’t do anything with the mark that is not allowed by the owner or law. So from my current understanding I could offer ‘Training for the Hibernate Implementation of JPA’. Some might ask, well is that so onerous to you? Is it that much trouble to put the extra verbiage into the marketing stuff? No its not, and you can bet if I ever publicly offer anything related to Hibernate or JBoss I will be putting that verbiage in.

Side note: be sure to check out the link to Simon Phipps' presentation on The Zen of Open.

Technorati Tags: trademark, open source, brands, branding, commodity, licensing

Trademarks and Open Source

More news on the open source / trademark front. eWeek reports on Ubuntu's trademark policy.

Trademarks have recently become something of an issue in open-source circles. Debian, for example, recently took exception to Mozilla's Firefox trademark rules and called its version of the popular browser, IceWeasel. So, Ubuntu has decided to address possible trademark issues by creating its own trademark policy.

As many of you know, open source licenses generally grant the licensee the right to freely modify and distribute the subject software's source code. In essence, open source takes away the copyright restrictions that so many proprietary software companies use to protect their code.

However, open source licenses do not grant the licensee rights to use the licensor's trademarks. In fact, trademarks rights are enforced strictly by companies that distribute branded open source software.

As Mark Webbink, Red Hat's deputy general counsel and secretary, said in 2004, Red Hat has no problems with anyone using its source code. But Red Hat does have problems with anyone using its name or its trademark "shadowman." That, Webbink said, Red Hat guards zealously. "In the open-source economy, it's the Red Hat brand, as well as its service, that carry value."

Thus, as eWeek points out, while CentOS' operating system is derived from Red Hat's code, it can't use the Red Hat trademark to identify its code. And so CentOS says that "CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor."

So open source companies such as Red Hat and Ubuntu sell commodities and build their value by building brands that customers prefer. If the value of these companies exist solely in the brand, then you'd expect them to vigourously protect their trademarks. See excerpt from Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution talking about Red Hat:

If we do not own intellectual property the way almost all of today's software companies do, and if those companies insist that their most valuable asset is the intellectual property represented by the source code to the software they own, then it is safe to say that Red Hat is not in the Software Business. Red Hat is not licensing intellectual property over which it has ownership. That's not the economic model that will support our customers, staff, and shareholders. So the question became: What business are we in?

The answer was to look around at other industries and try and find one that matched. We wanted an industry where the basic ingredients were free, or at least freely available. ...

We looked at the commodity industries and began to recognize some ideas. All leading companies selling commodity products, including bottled water (Perrier or Evian), the soap business (Tide), or the tomato paste business (Heinz), base their marketing strategies on building strong brands. These brands must stand for quality, consistency, and reliability. We saw something in the brand management of these commodity products that we thought we could emulate. ...

This was Red Hat's opportunity: to offer convenience, to offer quality, and most importantly to help define, in the minds of our customers, what an operating system can be. At Red Hat, if we do a good job of supplying and supporting a consistently high-quality product, we have a great opportunity to establish a brand that Linux OS customers simply prefer. ...

The power of brands translate very effectively into the technology business. We have evidence of this in the Venture Capital investors who have recently invested in several Open Source software companies. The one common denominator between all of the investments to date have been that the companies or their products have great name recognition, and are recognized as being quality products. In other words, they have successfully established a brand.

Technorati Tags: trademark, open source, brands, branding, commodity, licensing

Good Bank Brands Make Bad Bank Trademarks

Law review article by John M. Conley and Jayne C. Hunter - The Curse of History: Good Bank Brands Make Bad Bank Trademarks.

From the conclusion:

From a normative standpoint, it is clear that trademark law has never offered any special accommodations to the banking business, and shows no likelihood of doing so in the future. Nor should it. Unlike patent and some aspects of copyright law, which have developed highly technical and frequently unpredictable doctrines, trademark decisions have consistently been based on common-sense assessments of how consumer markets work. Although new technologies have sometimes posed novel questions (for example, whether use of someone else’s trademark as an Internet metatag is infringement), the framing of the analyses has been remarkably consistent and the answers given tolerably predictable over time and across industries. Neither banking’s economic and social significance nor its quirky history creates a mandate for special treatment.

This means that banking must come to terms with trademark law in its present state. As the case law we have reviewed indicates, banking has seemingly ignored trademark law for much of its history. There may have been understandable reasons for this in the past, but those reasons are now irrelevant. As bankers (and their lawyers) show increasing interest in making aggressive “offensive” use of trademarks, they must do the work of understanding how trademarks are established, strengthened, and protected. With that in mind, we offer the following practical thoughts:

Technorati Tags: trademark, law review, brand, branding, banking, registration

Google renames Froogle to Google Product Search

CNet news story here.

Acknowledging that it's better to be clear than clever, Google is rebranding "Froogle" as "Google Product Search" ... The ill-named Froogle was a problem from the start. "I don't think we understood the complications with rolling out another brand," Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search product and user experience, said in an interview with CNET News.com. "While it was a cute and clever name, it had issues around copyright and trademark, as well as internationalization…The pun (to "frugal") isn't obvious."

8 criteria of a credibility based logo

Dr. Bill Haig guest writes over on The Credibility Branding Blog on Credibility Based Logo Design (part 1, part 2).

Technorati Tags: branding, logos, credibility

Happy Ernst and Young day

I'm thinking that the folks over at Ernst & Young did not think of the negative branding effect (also here, here, and here) of what appears to be an E&Y recruitment video.

Technorati Tags: branding, Ernst & Young, recruitment video, oh happy day, gag

BrandWeek Article on Team Colors

There's a nice article on BrandWeek regarding the recent string of victories schools have been racking up in enforcing their school trademarks.

As these lawsuits show, colleges and universities are on the legal warpath to protect their trademarks. Why? It's something that any marketing major in these schools likely learns in freshman year: Licensing translates to serious revenue.

***

The message is one that extends to sports marketers everywhere, and it is a warning. The free rides you've been able to take on college coattails (be they green-and-white, crimson-and-gold or scarlet-and-gray) are over. The LSU v. Smack Apparel decision has made this clear—in black-and-white.

Technorati Tags: trademark, enforcement, sports, branding, licensing

The Naming Process - HARD

Nancy at Away With Words has a great post regarding the New York Times' article In a Global Marketplace, Claiming a Name Becomes an Art in Itself. And leave it to a namer to come up with an excellent title to her blog post: It's Hard Out Here for a Namer. Now, I can't get the song It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp out of my mind.

Technorati Tags: naming, branding, trademark, It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp, Hustle & Flow

Creating Brand Names

Chris Brown over at Branding & Marketing links to five naming tutorials and also to The Best Brands of the World (woorrlld, I say in Keith Olbermann fashion). Of course, make sure you clear your perfect brand name prior to making a substantial investment in its use.

Technorati Tags: branding, naming, trademark search, clearance

The overlooked marketing edge

And now a bit of branding, err marketing. This is after all, the TM Branding Cap.

Dustin Staiger over at Casual Fridays has an excellent post with pictures regarding word of mouth marketing.

Technorati Tags: branding, marketing, word of mouth, casual fridays, tipping point, seth godin

Martin + Oso Name Analysis

Away With Words has an excellent post analyzing the story behind American Eagle Outfitter's new store concept Martin + Osa.

From a being nosy (aka competitive intelligence) prespective, it's interesting that AE subsidiary Retail Licensing Company is the owner of the trademark, but American Eagle Outfitter owns the various AE marks.

Technorati Tags: branding, naming, trademark, competitive intelligence

Advertising versus Design - What impacts more on a brand's bottom line

That's the debate going on over at Heinz. This Brandweek story details how in 2004, Heinz pulled the plug on ketchup advertising, yet after a 2006 ketchup bottle redesign, ketchup consumption went up 78%.

But now, Heinz is about to embark on "one of the largest TV campaigns behind the flagship Heinz Ketchup brand since the 'Anticipation' spots of the 1970s."

Food analyst John McMillin of Prudential Securities welcomed the move. "Advertising is the lifeblood of brands. The lack of it represents a risk for long-term success," he said. "I'm pleased that Heinz is having success with in-store promotions. But you're only as good as your next promotion."

Still, the power of packaging can't be underestimated, said Ghansham Panjabi, a packaging analyst at Wachovia Securities: "When consumers see the Heinz logo on the fridge door every time they open it, it's taking marketing inside homes."

TMBC is silly with anticipation on how this will play out.

Technorati Tags: branding, advertising, design, heinz, ketchup

Colbert on AT&T

Funny clip from the Colbert Report on the rebranding of Cingular to AT&T. Hat tip to Cultural Branding.



Technorati Tags: branding, anti-trust, fun, re-branding, Colbert Report, AT&T, Cingular

Marketing Prepares Your Prospects

Excellent post from Chris Brown over at Branding & Marketing on the role of marketing.

Technorati Tags: branding, marketing, selling, blogging

Tyra Banks, the next Oprah and Martha Stewart

Just read Vanity Fair's piece on Tyra Banks (sorry, no online story).

A MODEL MOGULWith two TV hits—America's Next Top Model and her eponymous talk show—Tyra Banks has proved she's not just a pretty face. Nancy Jo Sales gets the former supermodel talking about guys, Oprah, and her ridiculous paycheck. Photographs by Michael Roberts.

It's a nice story, which of course got me wondering whether she's applied to register her name as a trademark. She has. Tyra, or more properly Ty Loke, LLC, has 23 pending applications. I haven't looked through them all, but all of the ones I've seen are intent to use applications. Her applications range from frozen confections to kitchen wares to furniture to bags.

So next time you walk down your store isles and see Tyra Banks branded goods, remember you read it here first.

Technorati Tags: celebrity trademarks, branding, trademark, intent to use

Branding Diseases

Checkout this CBS Sunday Morning piece regarding one piece of the Brand Institute's business, which makes up 20% of its overall business, of coming up with new names for diseases. And the client that's paying to re-name diseases? The drug companies. The key, according to the Brand Institute's President, is making up a name that describe the symptoms in a nice way ... making it okay to seek help preferably with the client's drugs. According to CBS, it works. For every $1 spent in advertisements, the drug companies make $4.

Technorati Tags: branding, naming, diseases, drug companies, advertising

Zol is slang Marijuana Cigarette

[Slang list here] But it's also the web address for Zionline, a website for Christians. It's also the name for Zimbabwe Online.

What's the trademark lesson here? Actually, I didn't know that zol is slang for marijuana cigarettes until I read Cherryflava's post. But the lesson is, when you're coming up with the a brand name, make sure that the word doesn't have any negative meanings that you would not want associated with your brand.

Technorati Tags: trademark, branding, slang, unintended consequences, zol, marijuana

The Name Game - tmbc style

Anantha over at Brandnama has a nice post re: naming the first brand you can think of for each letter of the alphabet. So here goes my attempt:

Apple
Bic
Cunard
Dell
Entenmann's
Frank Gates
Go Daddy
Heineken
IBM
Jantzen
Kellog
Linux
Minute Maid
Novell
Overstock.com
People Magazine
Qubo
Rice-a-Roni
Samsonite
Tim Hortons
Unilever
Valvoline
Wolverines (as in the University of Michigan Wolverines)
Xerox
Yatzee
Zillow.com

Y stumped me for a while. I don't know why I didn't choose Yahoo!

Update: Q also stumped me. The first thing I could think of was Qube, which for folks living in Columbus Ohio, was a Time Warner experiment for an interactive cable system. Since it no longer exists, I decided not to list it. What I finally thought of is Qubo. My daughter watches the channel on Saturday mornings. And talks about it alot. That's why I thought of it.

Technorati Tags: branding, name game, naming, brands, alphabet