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|CHAPTER 8 Products, Services, and Brands: Building Customer Value 277

set of features, benefits, services, and experiences con-
sistently to buyers. The brand promise must be clear,
simple, and honest. Motel 6, for example, offers clean
rooms, low prices, and good service but does not prom-
ise expensive furnishings or large bathrooms. In con-
trast, The Ritz-Carlton offers luxurious rooms and a
truly memorable experience but does not promise low
prices.

Brand Name Selection

A good name can add greatly to a product’s success.

However, finding the best brand name is a difficult

task. It begins with a careful review of the product

and its benefits, the target market, and proposed

marketing strategies. After that, naming a brand

becomes part science, part art, and a measure of

instinct.

Desirable qualities for a brand name include

Brands don’t have to be big or legendary to be classified as lovemarks. The the following: (1) It should suggest something about
occasionally epic lines at local Shake Shacks testify to its lovemark status. the product’s benefits and qualities: Beautyrest,

Sports Illustrated/Getty Images Lean Cuisine, Snapchat, Pinterest. (2) It should be

easy to pronounce, recognize, and remember: iPad, Tide, Jelly Belly, Twitter, JetBlue. (3) The

brand name should be distinctive: Panera, Swiffer, Zappos, Nest. (4) It should be extend-

able—Amazon.com began as an online bookseller but chose a name that would allow ex-

pansion into other categories. (5) The name should translate easily into foreign languages.

Before changing its name to Exxon, Standard Oil of New Jersey rejected the name Enco,

which it learned meant a stalled engine when pronounced in Japanese. (6) It should be ca-

pable of registration and legal protection. A brand name cannot be registered if it infringes

on existing brand names.

Choosing a new brand name is hard work. After a decade of choosing quirky names

(Yahoo!, Google) or trademark-proof made-up names (Novartis, Aventis, Accenture), to-

day’s style is to build brands around names that have real meaning. For example, names

like Silk (soy milk), Method (home products), Smartwater (beverages), and Blackboard

(school software) are simple and make intuitive sense. But with trademark applications

soaring, available new names can be hard to find. Try it yourself. Pick a product and see if

you can come up with a better name for it. How about Moonshot? Tickle? Vanilla? Treehug-

ger? Simplicity? Google them and you’ll find that they are already taken.

Once chosen, the brand name must be protected. Many firms try to build a brand name

that will eventually become identified with the product category. Brand names such as

Kleenex, JELL-O, BAND-AID, Scotch Tape, Velcro,

Formica, Magic Marker, Post-it notes, and Ziploc

have succeeded in this way. However, their very

success may threaten the company’s rights to the

name. Many originally protected brand names—

such as cellophane, aspirin, nylon, kerosene, lino-

leum, yo-yo, trampoline, escalator, thermos, and

shredded wheat—are now generic names that any

seller can use.

To protect their brands, marketers present them

carefully using the word brand and the registered
trademark symbol, as in “BAND-AID® Brand Adhe-

sive Bandages.” Even the long-standing “I am stuck

on BAND-AID ‘cause BAND-AID’s stuck on me” jin-

gle has now become “I am stuck on BAND-AID brand

‘cause BAND-AID’s stuck on me.” Similarly, a re-

cent Xerox advertisement notes that a brand name

can be lost if people misuse it. The ad asks people to

Protecting a brand name: This ad asks people to use the Xerox name only use the Xerox name only as an adjective to identify its
as an adjective to identify its products and services (such as “Xerox copiers”), products and services (such as “Xerox copiers”), not

not as a verb (“to Xerox” something) or a noun (“I’ll make a Xerox”). as a verb (“to Xerox” something) or a noun (“I’ll make

Associated Press a Xerox”).