A quarterly report on the strategies & tactics of naming, produced by
Rivkin & Associates LLC, a marketing and communications consultancy
YourName-dot-Whatever
Prepare for a messy new world of domain names in 2009.
ICANN, the little-known organization that oversees the Internet, plans to start selling the rights to anything from d...
You Can Differentiate Anything – Even Salt
“There is no such thing as a commodity,” Harvard Business School guru Ted Levitt once opined. “All goods and services can be differentiated.”
Morton Salt proved that premi...
Hospital Takes Heat over Stadium Naming Deal
A nonprofit hospital in Indiana is taking heat after it agreed to pay big bucks for the naming rights at a local minor-league baseball stadium.
Parkview Health operates six...
Ever Wonder Why Junk E-Mail Is Called “Spam?”
Unsolicited e-mail is known as “spam.” Why is that? The answer comes from the unlikely pairing of Hormel Foods and Monty Python. In 1937, Hormel Foods created a canned pre...
It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s Azul
One thing about creating a new company and running a contest to name it: You’re free to interpret the contest results any way you want.
JetBlue founder David Neeleman is s...
Getting Employees on Board with a Name Change
So you’re changing your company name. The old Stafko Products Corporation is now Simplex Corporation. You’ve thought about Wall Street, your customers, your suppliers.
What...
Woolworths Caught Sleeping with “Lolita” Beds
“Unbelievably bad taste.” “An alarming level of stupidity.” “How much encouragement does the pedophile community need?”
Those were just a few of the comments in the British...
Flowerbomb? What Were They Thinking?
Perfumers in Amsterdam debuted a new fragrance named Flowerbomb. Their intent was to evoke a “floral explosion” – a sweet profusion of flowers peppered with hints of or...
Super-Sizing a Name
The Hefty trademark for plastic trash bags goes back to 1968. This brand might have been called Mighty or Dense or Prodigious, or some other synonym for “large and stro...
BID, BUD, EAT, HOG – Stock Symbols with Flair
Who says corporations have no sense of humor?
When it comes to stock symbols, most are chosen specifically to reflect the company name. Presumably, that logical approach m...
Name Recognition Tops Taste Perception
Brand names taste better. That’s the conclusion from a savvy study of peanut butter and consumer choice.
The details were first reported years ago in The Journal of Con...
Creation of New Names Slows Slightly
The introduction of new names by U.S. companies has slowed slightly.
According to our 2004 survey, 81% of companies introduced a new name for a product, service, company or...
Trademark Trends: Q&A with Glenn Gundersen
Trademark applications can be a crystal ball of branding. New applications provide a glimpse of the buzzwords and themes that marketers believe will appeal to tomorrow’s consu...
Siren Songs in Licensing: Q&A with Jack Trout
One of the current siren songs of marketing is the opportunity to earn some extra money by licensing your brand name.
Someone comes up to you and offers you a deal you can...
The Making of a Name
By Steve Rivkin & Fraser Sutherland
The secrets of successful brand names— who makes them; why they’re made; and how they’re compiled, bought, sold, and protected
