A quarterly report on the strategies & tactics of naming, produced by
Rivkin & Associates LLC, a marketing and communications consultancy |
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You Can Differentiate Anything – Even Salt |
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“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... |
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Naming a New Brand vs. an “Enhanced” Brand |
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| Let’s say your brand has a significant and genuine improvement, and not just a cosmetic change. Most marketers agree that the new product deserves its own brand name and separ... |
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Fictional Vehicles, Fantasy Names |
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| It’s auto show season again in Detroit, Chicago, Geneva, New York and Beijing.
Car buffs can soak up a roadshow of new brands, both real and imagined – from reborn brands ... |
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Stodgy AT&T Silences “Cingular” |
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| De-Branding. That’s one way to describe it when a well-established brand name goes “poof!”
Knuckleheaded. That’s another way to describe a dubious marketing decision.
Th... |
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Humdrum Name, but First-Rate Communication |
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| Once the name was IDS, Investors Diversified Services. Then it became American Express Financial Advisors. And in late 2005, it was spun off and changed again to (very small d... |
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Boeing Plays "Name That Plane" With The Public |
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| We’ve reported before on the use of contests in naming. The maker of Crayola products, for instance, urged crayon enthusiasts to help rename an old color, and name suggestions... |
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Woolworths Caught Sleeping with “Lolita” Beds |
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| “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... |
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Flowerbomb? What Were They Thinking? |
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| 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... |
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Super-Sizing a Name |
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| 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... |
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BID, BUD, EAT, HOG – Stock Symbols with Flair |
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| 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... |
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Name Recognition Tops Taste Perception |
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| 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... |
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Creation of New Names Slows Slightly |
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| 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... |
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Trademark Trends: Q&A with Glenn Gundersen |
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| 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... |
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Siren Songs in Licensing: Q&A with Jack Trout |
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| 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... |
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| The Making of a Name |
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| By Steve Rivkin & Fraser Sutherland |
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| The secrets of successful brand names— who makes them; why they’re made; and how they’re compiled, bought, sold, and protected |
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