By Peter L. Getman
sophisticated man about town
The Holy Grail in brand ubiquity is when your brand name symbolizes an entire market category. Only then can your brand also become a verb.
Xerox it. FedEx it. Google it.
Fax it?
Alexander Bain patented the basis of what would become the fax machine in 1843. During the 1980s, the facsimile machine became a billion dollar market place. Yet what brand owns the concept and the word “fax?”
It’s a shame.
Today, the latest craze in water sports is stand up paddle boarding, commonly know as SUP or going SUPing. Originating in Hawaii from Beach Boy Surfing, the modern day SUP market is still fairly unclaimed. In fact, Google (there’s that verb again) “stand up paddle boarding” and you’ll get entries for:
• Standup paddleboarding
• Stand up paddle boarding
• Stand-up paddleboarding
• Stand-up paddle boarding
• Stand-up paddle surfing
• SUP surfing
• Paddlesurfing
• Paddle surfing
The market can’t even decide how it wants to spell itself. So until someone catches that wave, we’ll have to go SUPing. Twitter when you’re going; maybe we can Skype to arrange an outing! (See what I just did there?)
Another example is a former client, Incentive Systems. Guess what they did? They made—surprise!—”incentive systems for large sales enterprises,” which is fine until a competitor’s tagline becomes, advanced incentive systems or proven incentive systems.
Arguably, Incentive Systems invented the category; so we recommended they change their brand name and logotype to:
MicroArts also crafted and supported the market position as the people who invented incentive systems—reinforcing their position as a recognized educational leader within their domain.
Until it changed its name, the company marketed the entire market category and not their unique value within it. As a result, you could put the company name, Incentive Systems, as a tagline under their top three competitors’ logos and have it be a true statement.
That’s perhaps the biggest bummer a brand can have—a competitor stealing your thunder.
On the other hand, the right name and the right brand can be lightening in a bottle. If you want to try to capture that, zap me an email.