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BE THE GENERIC
Sometimes your brand name will turn into a verb, and sometimes it’s going to be a noun. Occasionally a brand turns into a metaphor, as in the case of “doing a Ratner”, saying something so disastrous about your company that you eventually cause its failure. Verb brands: To Hoover, to Google, to Skype, to Fedex, to Photoshop, to Sellotape. Noun brands: Rollerblade is used for in-line skate, Kleenex is used in the US for paper tissue or paper hankie, Perrier is used for sparkling water. Even Heroine was a brand name in the days when it was legal to buy opium over the counter in the form of the medicine, laudanum. The most widely used is probably the Biro, the balloint pen invented by László Biró. It was licensed by the British Royal Air Force for using at high altitude, then sold to Marcel Bich’s company in 1950 for his Bic pen company in France. Biró himself called his pen the Birome.
The idea If you’re the first in the market, or the one that does the most advertising to get your brand name known, you’re in a position to become the generic. At the moment, there’s a brand called Sugru, a strong synthetic putty that sets hard to repair things. It’s set to become a generic because those of us who use it find it a lot easier to call it that than, “the synthetic putty that sets hard”. There isn’t
202 • 100 GREAT BRANDING IDEAS
100 Great Branding Ideas 14dec.indd 202
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