Brand Names

Language and Advertising

April 22, 2010
Ehren Reilly
 What is a Brand?
• A brand is a highly abstract, multifacted
concept:
– Brand name
– Graphical trademark/logo
– Distinctive colors, patterns, type face
– Tag line or slogan
– Character/mascot
– Actual product(s)
– Corporate identity
 What is a Brand?
• A brand is a highly abstract, multifacted
concept:
– Brand name
– Graphical trademark/logo
–
– Tag line or slogan
– Character/mascot
– Actual product(s)
– Corporate identity
 What is a Brand?
• A brand is a highly abstract, multifacted
concept:
– Brand name
– Graphical trademark/logo
–
– Tag line or slogan
– Character/mascot
– Actual product(s)
– Corporate identity
 What is a Brand?
• A brand is a highly abstract, multi-facted
concept:
– Brand name
– Graphical trademark/logo
–
– Tag line or slogan
– Character/mascot
– Actual product(s)
– Corporate identity
What’s in a Brand, Besides the Name?

“The ultimate driving machine”

 History of Brands and Brand Names
• Brands before advertising use to tell property apart by
owner
– Brands on livestock, slaves, physical objects
– Brands on shipping crates
• Early use of brands to distinguish products
– Initials etched on hand-made goods
– Signatures on artwork
• Industrial revolution (late 18th century)
– Mass production
– Consistent products from same manufacturer
– Branded Products
– Logos and brand names as marketing
– Purpose: Telling products apart by producer
 Brands Can Transcend Individual
Products
• Virgin
• GE
• Kellogg’s
• Samsung
• Johnson & Johnson
• Sony
• Kraft
 Brand Names As Advertising
• What function do brands serve for advertisers?
– Distinguish product from competitor
– Repository of brand equity
• The value of a brand
• The sum of all the knowledge, feelings, etc. that consumers have
about the brand
• Where all that advertising exposure builds up in our culture
– Be an advertisement for the product
• Jiffy Lube, Oxy Clean, FreeCreditReport.com

• What function do brands serve for consumers?

– Help tell products apart
– Make confident purchases
– Develop brand affinity
 Types of Brand Names
• Abbreviation (Ameriprise, Microsoft, Amtrak, FedEx)
• Acronym (UPS, IBM, TCBY, AFLAC, NFL)
• Appropriation/metaphor of existing word (Java, Blackberry,
Caterpillar, Adobe)
• Descriptive (Toys R Us, E*Trade, Bath & Body Works)
• Alliteration, rhyme, humor (Dunkin’ Donuts, Piggly Wiggly)
• Evocative (Fandango, Yahoo!, London Fog)
• Neologisms (Xerox, Accenture, Verizon, Viagra, Lucent)
• Foreign word (Samurai, Häagen Dazs)
• Founders' names (Dell, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, Ford)
• Geography (Silicon Valley Bank, California Pizza Kitchen)
• Personification (Oracle, Midas, Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben)
 Legal Issues with Brand Names
• Brand names are arbitrary labels...right?
• Or do they make falsifiable claims?

• Can brand names create implicatures about

the nature of the brands?

• Can the puffery defense apply to brand

names?
Subtle Suggestion in Brand Names
• Many brand names are more subtle, and don’t
exactly create implicatures
– ExtenZe
– Overstock.com
– Price Club
– Burger King
– Aspercreme
– Whole Foods
– Zoloft
 Brand Names that Make Implicatures
• Does the maxim of quality affect how we
interpret brand names?
– Oxy-Clean
– Lean Cuisine
– Quarter Pounder
– Coca-Cola
• Maxims of quantity, relevance?
– Puffs Plus
– Windows XP Pro
– Pepsi Max
– Bob’s Discount Furniture
– Cost Plus World Market
Different Intuitions about How Meaningful
these Modified Brand Names Are? Why?
 Brand Names That Make Legally
Enforceable Product Claims
• Kellogg’s Low Fat Granola
– Granola must be low in fat (as defined by the FDA)
• 3 grams or less of total fat per serving

• Hidden Valley Light Ranch

– Salad dressing must be “light” (as defined by the FDA)
• For foods deriving more than 50 percent of calories from fat, the light product
is reduced in fat by at least 50 percent; or
• For foods deriving less than 50 percent of calories from fat, the light product is
either reduced in calories by at least one third or reduced in fat by at least 50
percent; or
• For foods with modified sodium content, the light product must be reduced in
sodium by at least 50 percent.

• FreeCreditReport.com
– Credit report must be free
 “Free” Credit Reports
• Your credit report is free from
AnnualCreditReport.com
• FreeCreditReport.com will fetch your free credit
report for you if you enroll in their $18/month
credit monitoring service.
• FreeCreditReport.com Ad vs. FTC Parody Ad
• FTC made a regulation that any products
advertising “free” credit reports must include a
prominent link to AnnualCreditReport.com
• FreeCreditReport.com responded by making the
“free” credit report now cost $1.
• Is this now a false advertising claim of “Free”?
 FreeCreditReport.com
IMPORTANT INFORMATION: When you order your $1
Credit Report and free Score here, you will begin your
7-day trial membership in Triple Advantage. If you
don't cancel your membership within the 7-day trial
period*, you will be billed $14.95 for each month that
you continue your membership. You may cancel your
trial membership anytime within the trial period
without charge.
Why isn’t my Credit Report free? Due to federally
imposed restrictions, it is no longer feasible for us to
provide you with a free Experian Credit Report. So, for
now, we’ll be charging you $1 for your Report...we’ll
donate to charity.
 Psychology of Brands and Brand
Names
• Do brands "matter" for consumers?
– Yes!
• Experimental subjects enjoy their favorite brand more
when they know its identity than when they receive it
anonymously.
• This manifests as a different neural response to the
same physical stimulus, depending on whether the
subject was told the brand of the stimulus*
• If you’re a Coke loyalist, Coke tastes better when you
know its Coke.
* Maclure, S. et al. 2004. Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference
for Culturally Familiar Drinks. Neruon, Vol. 44, 379–387
 Psychology of Brands and Brand
Names
• Do novel/unfamiliar brand names actually
communicate semantic meaning?
– Yes! Consumers treat brand names as search
attributes.
• Experimental subjects make different inferences about
products’ quality, value, and overall desirability based
on very subtle attributes of the brand names. *
• This effect occurred even when the subjects had no
other information about the product, besides the brand
name.
Klink, Richard R. 2001. Creating meaningful new brand names: A study of semantics and sound
symbolism. Journal of Marketing.
Wanke, Michaela et al. 2007. Brand Name Influence on Brand Perception. Psychology & Marketing
Brand Names as New Lexical Material
• Many brand names are newly invented words
• What do coined brand names mean?
– Aside from just arbitrarily referring to the product
• How do coined brand names get their
meanings?
– Aside from advertising campaigns, product
packaging, etc.
• How do any new words get their meaning?

From their parts
 Morphology in Linguistics
• In linguistics, morphology is the study of
words and word parts, and the principles
governing how word parts can be combined.
 Basics of Morphology
• Morphemes are the smallest independently
meaningful units of language.
– Root words (cheese, the, of, speak, fast)
– Prefixes (un-, pre-, counter-, re-)
– Suffixes (-ing, -ize, -s, -ly, -th)

• Morphological processes are processes that

combine morphemes together to make words.
 Morphological Processes
• Affixation: Combining root words with prefixes and/or
suffixes.
– dog-s, drink-ing, stupid-ity, warm-th, pre-fix, un-cool

• Compounding: Combining multiple root words with

one another in a sequence.
– snow-ball, flash-pasteurize, carry-out, law-suit

• Morphological blending: Cominbing roots together like

compounding but with sound overlap and possible
deletion of sound material.
– bridezilla, smog, spork, outro, automagically, urinalysis
 Productive Morphology
• Productive morphology: Morphology rules
that allow us to make new words out of old
words.
• Language speakers have the ability to
correctly understand completely new,
unfamiliar words
 Productive Morphology
• Resealability

• Vegetarianize

• Demagnifier

• Aporkalypse

• Gayby boom

• Alcoholiday
 Sound Symbolism
• Typical words have an arbitrary sound-meaning association.

• A special class of words are sound-symbolic, meaning that the

sound matches the meaning in some way.
– Some refer directly to sounds: crash, pitter-patter, piss, thud, sizzle
– Others are more abstract: hippety-hop, bling, see-saw, badonkadonk,
wiggle-waggle

• Phonesthemes are sound units that are not exactly morphemes

(they are not decomposable segments, and they don’t have
independent meaning), but which seem to form cluster of words
with similar meanings.
– glitter, gleam, glimmer, glisten, glow, glare
– sway, sweep, swerve, swim, swing, swish, swivel, swoosh, swan, swirl
 Semantic Content of Coined Brand
Names
• Many pharmaceutical brands use a combination of English
and Latin roots, affixes, sound-symbolism, compounds and
blending to form semantically rich coined names:
– Zoloft
– Prozac
– Vallium
– Wellbutrin
– ExtenZe
– Viagra
– Claritin
– Flonase
– Levitra
– Rogaine
– Ambien
 Semantic Content of Coined Brand
Names
• Technology companies also like coined,
semantically rich names:
– Agilent
– Lucent
– Compaq
– Pentium
– Verizon
 Semantic Content of Other Type of
Brand Names
• What semantic content is present in brand
names that are not novel, coined words?
– Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben
– Morgan Stanley, Solomon Smith Barney
– Reebok’s DMX shoe technology
– cellular technologies: PCS, 3G
– Hidden Valley salad dressing
– Arrowhead water
– Häagen Dazs
 Brand Names in the Linguistic
Ecosystem
• Brand names are real words
• Morphological and grammatical processes that
apply to ordinary words also apply to brand
names.
– Googling, Xeroxing, Witing-out
• Frequently-used brand names gradually drift
from proper nouns to common nouns and verbs.
• Burts Bees makes the best chapstick
• Brand name becomes genericized
– In legal terms, the trademark become “diluted”
 Genericized Brand Names
• Aspirin • Kleenex • TelePrompTer
• AstroTurf • Laundromat • Tupperware
• Band-Aid • Magic Marker • Vaseline
• Chapstick • Ping-Pong • Velcro
• FedEx • Play-Doh • Walkman
• Frisbee • Plexiglas • Wite-Out
• Google • Polaroid • Windex
• Hacky Sack • Popsicle • X-Acto
• Hi-Liter • Post-it • Xerox
• Jacuzzi • Q-tips
• Jeep • Rollerblade
• Jell-O • Rolodex
• Jet Ski • Scotch Tape
• Kitty Litter • Styrofoam
 What Can Brand Names Teach us
About Linguistics?
• “Morphemes are the smallest independently
meaningful units of language”
• But it seems consumers infer meaning from
brand names at a sub-morphemic level.
– The “vi” in “Viagra” carries some of the youthful
masculine energy of vim, vigor, and vitality with it.
– The “erizon” in “Verizon” carries some of the
optimism of horizon.
• Morphological blending and phonesthemes are
awkward issues in traditional linguistic theory.