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Name, Part 2 |
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Most firms struggle to get their names into the public consciousness and achieve the wide recognition they desire. For a bemused few, however, the problem is the opposite: their name is so handy and perfect for the product or service, it is adopted by the public and becomes a generic term. When this happens, the owner of the brand name is in danger of losing the rights to it as a trademark, since generic names of things cannot be trademarked. The list of former trademarks that are now common words is a long one (corn flakes, linoleum, aspirin ...) and the list of currently endangered names is just as long: Kleenex, Xerox, FedEx, Google ...
Brand names encounter the biggest problems when they cross borders. Federal Express found it expedient to shorten their name: research showed that "federal" had negative connotations in some countries, while some Asians had difficulty with the r and I. There are many humorous tales of marketers who fail to research all the evocations a name can have in a local language, and end up with a failure.
Some brands choose a completely different name when they cross borders. The Snickers bar was renamed Marathon when it was |
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