DO YOU GOOGLE OR DO YOU XEROX ?

[Anonymous]

DO YOU GOOGLE OR DO YOU XEROX ?

Companies are using Brandverbing to bring their brands into the public lexicon.
Google it.” “Did you Xerox the report?” “Please FedEx that.” Once upon a time, using a brand name as a verb was verboten. It was behaviour that would make a trademark lawyer squirm. But, increasingly, marketers have embraced brandverbing.They’ve decided that the branding bull’s-eye is to become part of the language—in effect, having your trademark substitute in everyday usage for the type of action or service that your mark identifies. Could there be, they argue, any clearer expression of a brand’s leadership?

“I’m Facebooking.”

“Did you TiVo the awards show?”

“I’m going to Photoshop her out of the picture.”

In other words, just verb it!

The proper care and feeding of trademarks occupied an entire chapter in The Making of a Name authored by Fraser Sutherland and I.Never use a trademark as a verb, advises the International Trademark Association (INTA). Trademarks are products or services, never actions, states INTA specifically.“Trademarks are proper adjectives that grammatically describe the noun they precede. Trademarks should always be followed by a generic term: Hoover vacuum cleaner, Xerox photocopy, Febreze spray,” INTA details and warns.

The Internet generation, though, is increasingly casual about naming protocols—and rightly so.Who other than a trademark attorney would say, “Let’s look it up on the Google brand search engine,” or “Let’s go in-line skating with Rollerblade in-line skates.” (Get real!)

New Entrants
Entrants in a new category often embrace the use of brand names as verbs. Their hope is that the brand becomes both the generic owner for the whole category as well as the call to action: “Skype me when you get to Lisbon.” In other words, these marketers strive to make clear to consumers that the action indicated by the brandverb can only be accomplished by using the branded product or service.

There are even marketers who go right ahead and “verb up” publicly—and legally. The Vanguard Group is a huge American investment management company that manages nearly $2 trillion in mutual funds and other assets. Visit their website and you’ll see a big headline: Are you just investing, or are you Vanguarding? A click-on button invites you to “learn more about Vanguarding.” A print advertisement says, “Reacting to the stock market is just investing. Taking stock in the long term is Vanguarding.”

That’s not all. The company has even taken the bizarre step of registering “Vanguarding” as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In trademark registration Rs 3902041, Vanguarding is now legally protected and defined as: Investment management services, financial planning services, mutual fund investment services, securities brokerage services and financial information provided by electronic means.

In an interview with The New York Times, a Vanguard marketing executive said, “Using our name as a verb is a device to create intrigue, create interest in doing some research, some investigation of Vanguard, to learn what makes us different.”

This isn’t a red herring. Here’s another example. The Kroger Company is an American retail supermarket giant with $76 billion in sales. It was founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 and now operates some 3,600 stores. One of Kroger’s famous advertising slogans was, “Let’s Go Krogering,” accompanied by a jingle of the same name. That verbified slogan persists and it now appears at the bottom of stickers handed out to children in stores.

Change In Time
Several years ago, Xerox ran advertisements in magazines targeted at journalists. There are two R’s in Xerox, said one famous headline, referring to the trademark “R”, reminding journalists not to use Xerox as lower-case noun or verb.If you allow the use of your brand name generically, copyright lawyers will warn, you will lose—over time—your trademark rights. It’s true. Look up common words such as aspirin or escalator in the dictionary and you’ll realise they were once registered trademarks.

But today, marketers are more concerned about getting known now, today, immediately—more so than weakening their naming rights later on. And most marketers can only dream about their name becoming the de facto verb for that new category.Marketing author and grammar Nazi, Seth Godin likes to say, “Nouns just sit there, inanimate lumps. Verbs are about wants and desires and wishes.” He’s on the right track. Verbs convey motion and action. They’re all about getting something done—such as buying a product.Which is why so many marketers encourage the verbifying of their precious brand names—and why so many consumers are so comfortable using them as everyday words.

[Author]

August 18, 2011 at 8:19 AM