I was sitting here at my desk, gazing idly out of my window and
thinking noble thoughts, when I saw a truck marked, "The Window
Washers," park in front of the building next door to Language Log
Plaza. No question about what it was doing there. Its name was clear
enough. The neighboring building wasn't getting sprayed for termites or
getting its leaking faucets fixed. The people who own this window
washing company made it very clear that they, well, wash windows.
From the consumer's perspective, there's something rather comforting
about generic and descriptive names. But I know what you're thinking --
trademark laws make generic and descriptive names impossible to protect
and another company can use that name whenever they want to. Guarding
against name theft, most corporations aim for a suggestive name,
one that, according to trademark law, requires some operation of the
imagination to connect the name with the product or service, like Tide
or Visa. To protect their name even more, they could try to
create a fanciful name, one that is coined for the express purpose of
functioning as a trademark, like Xerox or Kodak. Or they could go for
an arbitrary name consisting of a word or symbol that's in common usage
but is arbitrarily applied to their goods or services in such a way
that it isn't descriptive or suggestive, like Shell gasoline or Apple
computers.
Suppose for a moment that the nice people at "The Window Washers" were
worried about someone else using their name. To avoid this, the owners
could have called it "Alpine Cleaning" or "Nu-View" or "Optotex" or
"Kenny's Cleaning Service." Maybe this would prevent other companies
from trading on their name but I, for one, wouldn't be sure we should
call them to wash our windows here at the Plaza.
A lot of work goes into finding a suitable trade name that can be
protected. For example, The
Igor Naming Guide is at our disposal. Its goal is to help companies
"customize" their name and "make sure that all aspects of a work plan
are designated to complement your naming project, corporate culture,
approval process and timeframe." For some reason Igor doesn't
always deal with the categories of trademarks used by trademark law. It
refers to suggestive names, for example, as "evocative" (maybe an
improvement) and wisely puts much of its focus on this category,
probably because most trademark litigation relates to whether or not a
name is suggestive.
Igor provides lots of interesting examples. In the category of airline
names, for example, it notes that Qantas, an invented name like
Kodak and Xerox, stands alone in this category. Most airlines choose
functional names, like Alitalia, Jet Blue, Air France, Midway, and
Delta. But even evocative names can backfire if you're not careful. For
example, Igor points out that the name, "Virgin Airlines," is capable
of confusing the company's positioning with its services, noting that
"Virgin" says essentially, "we're new at this," while the public may
want an airline to be experienced, safe and professional. Not only
this, but religious people might be offended by this name and investors
might not take the company seriously. Igor also analyzes the possible
down sides of the names, "Yahoo" ("nobody will take stock quotes and
world news seriously from a bunch of Yahoos"), "Banana Republic"
("derogatory cultural slur"), "Oracle" ("unscientific, unreliable, only
fools put their faith in an oracle, sounds like orifice"), and "The
Gap" ("means something is missing, incomplete, negative"). On the other
hand, Igor points out that "Virgin" also suggests that the airline's
corporate positioning is "different, confident, exciting, alive, human,
provocative, fun" while "Oracle's " positioning is "different,
confident, superhuman, evocative, powerful, forward thinking."
As our President often says, "It's a lotta work." This doesn't come
close to doing justice to Igor's analyses of corporate names, but I
think you can get the point.
"The Window Washers" apparently didn't feel the need to delve deeply
into their "corporate positioning" or whether they might "achieve
separation" from their competitors. They weren't trying to demonstrate
that they are different or to create an unforgettable name. I don't
suppose they were trying to "dominate a category" either. They just
wanted to tell us what they do in the simplest and clearest way
possible.
I kinda like that.