MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With over 300,000 trademark applications in the U.S. each year, William Lozito, Chief Branding Officer of Strategic Name Development contends, “creating a durable and trademarkable brand name is increasingly difficult.”
However, if one looks to the origins of famous brand names, they provide inspiration and insight for how to surmount the trademark hurdle.
Here are a few instructive examples of brand names created in the month of May.
What leading cereal brand had to change its initial name?
Well, it wasn't Quaker Oats. Rather, Quaker was responsible for challenging the registration of Cheerioats, originally introduced on May 1, 1941, which prompted the rebranding to Cheerios, as we know it today.
Everyone knows that the Baby Ruth candy bar, introduced on May 6, 1915, was named after George Herman, the famous baseball player better known as Babe Ruth. Right?
Lozito thought so too, and as a Minnesota Twins fan, hoped to one day launch the Joe Mauer Power bar.
Although the naming of Baby Ruth and the home run king were in no way connected, there is still hope for Joe.
Moving from candy to clothing, the word Velcro seems to be as familiar to English speakers as shoelace. Velcro was registered as a trademark on the 14th of May in 1958 and remains active as a brand name today.
A combination of two words, "velour" and "crochet," Velcro is, linguistically speaking, a portmanteau.
“Portmanteau brand names that use parts of words create a durable and defensible brand name. A good example is, Clorox, created from chlorine and sodium hydroxide,” noted Diane Prange, Chief Linguistics Officer.
“Another approach to portmanteau naming is the combination or mashup of two whole words like the T-Mobile® myTouch®. However, this technique has a serious downside – names tend to be emulatable, not unique and result in a weaker trademark,” said Prange. “For instance HP recently introduced the TouchPad tablet.”
Eponymous naming is another technique that historically, provided for strong and lasting trademarks. Ray Kroc is a business icon and McDonald’s legend, but he could not have built the world’s largest hamburger chain without Richard and Maurice McDonald and their now infamous surname.
Being granted a federal trademark like McDonald’s is much less likely today, because under federal trademark law, a trademark that is a surname requires “acquired distinctiveness.”
Strategic Name Development has identified significant branding events that have occurred on every day in the month for May. Think of this as the “mayday” of brand naming.
By the way, “mayday” is derived from the French “venez m’aider,” which means, “come help me.”
For the full May This Day in Branding™ report, click here.
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About Strategic Name Development, Inc.
Strategic Name Development, Inc., a brand naming company, has expertise in global product naming, company naming, tagline development, and brand architecture. We utilize our global capabilities while combining linguistics, creativity, and brand name research to build global brand names that are instantly recognizable, memorable, trademarkable, and strategically sound. We augment our naming expertise with our global proprietary Name DNA Validation® research methodology, which compares name candidates to each other and against our proprietary normative database. For more information on Strategic Name Development visit www.namedevelopment.com.