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Rivkin & Associates Home The Naming Workshop Creating New Names
 
A quarterly report on the strategies & tactics of naming, produced by
Rivkin & Associates LLC, a marketing and communications consultancy
You Can Differentiate Anything – Even Salt
“There is no such thing as a commodity,” Harvard Business School guru Ted Levitt once opined. “All goods and services can be differentiated.” Morton Salt proved that premi...
Naming a New Brand vs. an “Enhanced” Brand
Let’s say your brand has a significant and genuine improvement, and not just a cosmetic change. Most marketers agree that the new product deserves its own brand name and separ...
Ever Wonder Why Junk E-Mail Is Called “Spam?”

Unsolicited e-mail is known as “spam.” Why is that? The answer comes from the unlikely pairing of Hormel Foods and Monty Python. In 1937, Hormel Foods created a canned pre...

Fictional Vehicles, Fantasy Names
It’s auto show season again in Detroit, Chicago, Geneva, New York and Beijing. Car buffs can soak up a roadshow of new brands, both real and imagined – from reborn brands ...
Getting Employees on Board with a Name Change
So you’re changing your company name. The old Stafko Products Corporation is now Simplex Corporation. You’ve thought about Wall Street, your customers, your suppliers. What...
Promoting the New Name: A Primer on PR
Adopting a new company name isn’t enough. If an organization is really proud of its new moniker – and it ought to be – then promoting the new identity with all its important c...
 
Woolworths Caught Sleeping with “Lolita” Beds
“Unbelievably bad taste.” “An alarming level of stupidity.” “How much encouragement does the pedophile community need?” Those were just a few of the comments in the British...
Flowerbomb? What Were They Thinking?
Perfumers in Amsterdam debuted a new fragrance named Flowerbomb. Their intent was to evoke a “floral explosion” – a sweet profusion of flowers peppered with hints of or...
Super-Sizing a Name
The Hefty trademark for plastic trash bags goes back to 1968. This brand might have been called Mighty or Dense or Prodigious, or some other synonym for “large and stro...
BID, BUD, EAT, HOG – Stock Symbols with Flair
Who says corporations have no sense of humor? When it comes to stock symbols, most are chosen specifically to reflect the company name. Presumably, that logical approach m...
 
Name Recognition Tops Taste Perception
Brand names taste better. That’s the conclusion from a savvy study of peanut butter and consumer choice. The details were first reported years ago in The Journal of Con...
Creation of New Names Slows Slightly
The introduction of new names by U.S. companies has slowed slightly. According to our 2004 survey, 81% of companies introduced a new name for a product, service, company or...
Trademark Trends: Q&A with Glenn Gundersen
Trademark applications can be a crystal ball of branding. New applications provide a glimpse of the buzzwords and themes that marketers believe will appeal to tomorrow’s consu...
Siren Songs in Licensing: Q&A with Jack Trout
One of the current siren songs of marketing is the opportunity to earn some extra money by licensing your brand name. Someone comes up to you and offers you a deal you can...
 
The Making of a Name
By Steve Rivkin & Fraser Sutherland
The secrets of successful brand names— who makes them; why they’re made; and how they’re compiled, bought, sold, and protected
Rivkin & Associates Home The Naming Workshop Creating New Names
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