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Every day millions of people in many countries mention a select group of brands in their daily language. These brands have developed beyond their proprietary roles and taken on lives of their own – sometimes with confusing results.
The British, for example, use the word Hoover to mean a vacuum cleaner – any vacuum cleaner. The Hoover brand has become noun, verb and adjective. Vacuum cleaners made by Hoover are of course called
hoovers, but then so are those made by Electrolux and Dyson.
Alan Hughes, Trademarks Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says the dictionary includes several hundred proprietary brand names. Most are defined exclusively in reference to the brand, but a small number have wider connotations.
“There are around two dozen proprietary names in the dictionary that are used in an extended or allusive way,” says Hughes. He highlights examples including Band-Aid, Biro and Scotch Tape or
Sellotape.
But for brand owners, is this always a good thing? Aga, whose range cookers have been produced in
Shropshire, England, since 1929, is the common word in Britain for any similar range cooker. Other manufacturers use the term “Aga-style” in their advertising, thus capitalizing on Aga’s reputation for quality and reliability.
Rebecca Morris, PR Manager for the Aga-Rayburn company, admits brand owners can only go so far in controlling use of their trademarks. Speaking specifically about
Aga, she says there is little it can do about use of its name in reference to other range cookers, but adds that the company will act if the brand is treated detrimentally by competitors.
But in some instances careless talk can cost sales. SPAM luncheon meat became the butt of numerous jokes when it was satirized by the British comedic team Monty Python. In Britain, SPAM was associated with wartime food rationing and its adoption into the comic vocabulary coincided with – and some would say contributed to – declining sales. The last UK SPAM factory closed in 1997.
Subsequently, the word has taken on a new meaning as unwanted email. At first, SPAM’s trademark owner, Hormel Foods, resisted. It challenged junk-email entrepreneur Sanford Wallace over his registration of the domain name “spamford.com” and his use of the SPAM product in publicity photographs.
But ultimately the company admitted defeat. In 2000, it stated that it no longer objected to the alternative use of the word. Julie Craven, Hormel’s director of public relations, said the company was being pragmatic: "It certainly was at a point where it was becoming so much out there, and so much a part of popular culture."
Protecting one’s brand name once it has been let loose into the language might seem impossible, but it doesn’t stop trademark owners trying. Hughes is contacted several times every year by owners who want their brand’s definition changed in the OED. It is a pressure the dictionary resists. “Usually they want us to remove their brand or represent it in a certain way,” says Hughes. “If people talk about a trademark in a way thought improper, the owner may not like it but it is a fact. We record the word in the way it is used on a day-to-day basis.”
But there are instances when corporations have had success turning back the tide. The Rollerblade company acted when the media started to talk about “rollerblading,” promoting instead the term “in-line skating,” which is now widely used. Similarly, the Xerox Corporation prevented publications from using the term “xerox” in place of “photocopy.”
Motor manufacturer Skoda, meanwhile, used to be a byword for shoddiness and lack of style. When Volkswagen took over in the early 1990s, they decided to tackle the jokers head-on while openly admitting that the Skoda name can still be a problem. UK television commercials show buyers irrationally changing their minds at the last minute even though the facts about Skoda’s quality and reliability have been laid out for them. The direct approach seems to work, with Skoda’s UK sales in 2001 up 30% from 2000.
But meanings attached to brands by consumers can be subtle – and thus harder to control. A survey of the use of the word Nike in the press showed that on the one hand it is, as Nike would wish, connected to notions of sports and fitness. On the other hand, it can be used in less flattering terms, which the brand owner can do little to control. Consider the three examples below, which each use the Nike brand to depict the subject.
When Bill Clinton jogged in Oxford last year, he was described by the Sunday Times as “wearing a black Nike t-shirt and shorts emblazoned with the legend Miami Heat.” Here Nike is associated with celebrity and dynamism.
The Sunday Express wrote about student summer jobs: “they must work – to pay back their debts, to pay next term’s fees, to buy their new Nikes and Engineered Levis.” Similarly, in a piece about Delft in the Netherlands, The Times observed that one area of the town was “full of Nike-clad kids lounging around… listening to Belgian techno.” Here the name is used ironically to allude to trend-following. To a perhaps older generation of jaded journalists, Nike is not so much a cool brand, but a term to depict fashion-obsessed youth.
The Independent on Sunday described “the world’s most notorious drug baron” Pablo Escobar, as having the image of a “softly spoken, chubby, Nike-wearing, pedophile drug monster.” Here the brand is associated with the worst of excesses and depicted in a downright derogatory context.
Simon Charlesworth, Nike UK Corporate Communications Manager, says that Nike is about sports, and the writer of the piece about Bill Clinton is trying to attach the properties of the brand to the ex-president. However, when asked about references to Nike in other contexts, he says that comments are “just media observations. The journalist is reporting what he sees.”
But the key implication of the survey – a form of analysis that could prove useful to marketers wanting to see how their brands are really perceived – is that Nike means different things to different market segments. Youthful Nike buyers may have absorbed the values Nike promotes, but others may regard the brand very differently. This alternative perception slips out almost unconsciously when the brand is discussed.
It is the paradox of branding that the more successful a brand, the bigger a target it becomes. Once absorbed into the language anyone can say anything about it.
However – as Oscar Wilde observed – perhaps it is better to be talked about. Morris of Aga feels that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Speaking positively she feels that “Aga has become generic and that is a good thing. It’s nice that we have instant recognition, and it has benefits in lots of cases.” (25-Feb-02)
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