Thanks a billion: Making names pay

Words are free. Well, they start out free, anyway. When developing a new name for a product, service, or business, it's easy to window-shop, imagining how your brand might look wearing this word or that. Then the search gets serious, and you spend time and creative effort to find ones that represent your business accurately. An investment in linguistic and validation research follows, and the ever-important trademark registration. At what point, exactly, does a word transform from a handful of letters into a valuable asset that's synonymous with the brand it represents?

It takes time and investment to turn a word into a widely recognized brand, but it can pay off handsomely. Forbes noted that names can come to comprise a major portion of a business's total valuation: "'Google,' 'Walmart' and 'Microsoft'—all trademarked names—represent a significant chunk of their owners' overall worth." This means, potentially, billions of dollars.

And the equity in a name goes beyond dollar signs. It has the power to inspire, to differentiate, to help your audiences understand that you're the right choice. It's a simple sound, a few syllables, yet it can have the power to move markets.

So how did the journey from "apple" to Apple™ happen? A word becomes a billion-dollar asset when iconic products are combined with concerted brand-building efforts. This special mixture yields value—a value that's captured in the name. As that value grows, so does the need to protect the name from misuse and outright piracy. Enter trademark legal.

Brands and trademarks are often considered synonymous. They're related, but far from the same. You can register a trademark and not have a valuable brand, but it's impossible to build a valuable brand without owning its trademark.

Trademarks are the quickest, most cost-effective way to ensure your name is exclusively yours. As every brand owner knows, differentiation is key. As the value of your brand and name grows, it's the power of the trademark that keeps would-be infringers at bay. For this reason, "the strength of its trademark defines the power of your brand."

Owning a trademark doesn't guarantee your name or the brand behind it will become a billion-dollar asset. But it does provide the legal foundation on which you can build a free word into a prized aspect of your brand's identity.

This week's guest authors are Jerome McDonnell, Global Trademark Director, and Ilan Beesen, Senior Consultant, Verbal Identity.

As Brand rivalries go, Apple vs. Samsung has the makings of an epic one to watch. It’s the Ford versus Chevy of the age.

When I first heard of the Samsung Experience Shops that Best Buy plans to roll out in May, the easy judgment was that it’s yet another “me too” move on Samsung’s part. The comparisons are inevitable and differences will likely vary by degree. That this is a great move for Samsung and a possible shot of adrenalin for Best Buy is also undeniable.

Brands benefit when they can become experiences and retailers benefit when they get an exclusive leg-up with hot brands. the interconnectivity of mobile devices, TVs and content to a brand like Samsung could be further leveraged, and consumer experiences of aspects of what the brand offers today’s consumer broadened. An immersive experience with trained consultants is fast becoming a necessity to demonstrate innovation.

But is the bigger story the implication for Best Buy and how consumer electronics brands and retailers thrive together in the future?

Best Buy began as a category killer for electronics and an antidote for the hard sell commissioned sales experience of the day. When the rest of the electronics retail landscape was literally “showrooming” products, Best Buy was allowing shoppers to buy from inventory on the floor at great prices, with a helpful unbiased staff. There were no three-part invoices, no pick up counters and no salespeople who made you feel stupid. It was refreshing, lots of brands at great prices.

Interbrand Design Forum actually designed the second generation stores with Best Buy and it was an objective to communicate a breadth of brands, because selection was king. Best Buy was a hot concept and well capitalized, opening many stores to cover the market, so manufacturers clamored to get slotted on the shelves. In fact, Best Buy was the retailer where Samsung came into preeminence and ultimately stole Sony’s thunder in the consumer electronics category.

Brands were merchandised shoulder-to-shoulder and competed on price and features. It was a brand party that Best Buy hosted where the bulk of shoppers decided who was cool and who was not.

In 10 years local Best Buy stores could look like mini Consumer Electronics Shows. With the advent of Apple Shops, Samsung Experience Shops and likely more shops to come from other brands, what is Best Buy’s role now? The current (old) model provided a shopper experience like a grocery store where shoppers navigate from store, to category, to subcategory, to brand. With the proliferation of branded shops, the shopper experience is shaken up.

The implication is that shoppers must navigate by brand first and foremost. This means that the role of Brand in the shopper decision is amplified and brands will need to aggressively clarify what they offer and their propositions. Brands will need to divert marketing dollars to retail experiences and Best Buy, likely led by consumer insights, will need to arbitrate and define which brands make sense to have experiences and which do not.

Ultimately Best Buy could evolve into a confederation of branded experiences with fewer and fewer opportunities to define their own value proposition in the mix, like a convention center for branded product experiences. Traditional retailers too have been playing with the in-store individual brand experience, including Macy’s, JC Penny and Target, featuring celebrity brands such as Martha Stewart and large branded displays for brands such as Starbucks, a retail giant in its own right.

Best Buy may likely be held hostage by the needs of the brands to use their venue to tell their stories as much as close sales. The implications could be huge for Best Buy and retail. Demand creation will change, shopper experiences will change, business models will change, marketing budgets will be reallocated and retailers will redesign their organizations around this new Brand Experience focus. That is how I see what appears to be a benign rivalry massively influencing the bigger consumer electronics landscape.

Bill Chidley is SVP, Executive Consultant, Interbrand Design Forum.

Pictured: Martin Cooper (from ArrayComm) & Facebook Home

Yesterday the world celebrated the 40th anniversary of Motorola's demonstration of its portable telephone, the DYNA TAC system. Martin Cooper, then Vice President of Motorola, Inc., is said to have called a rival at AT&T's Bell Labs from the streets of New York City. According to an April 3, 1973 press release from Motorola, the new portable phone was expected to be available for public use as soon as 1976. The cell phone took a bit longer to take off with the public, but four decades later smartphones have become part of our daily lives and today president and CEO, AT&T Mobility, Ralph de la Vega was on hand at Facebook's big unveiling of Facebook Home.

As David Vales, Senior Systems Engineer for Interbrand, noted in his recent blog post, Smart Phone Sector Heats Up With Big Launches, with BlackBerry's Z10 now available in the US and Samsung's release of the S4, which Vales describes as "very impressive," the smartphone race is intensifying. Today's Facebook unveiling was the introduction of Home, software designed to "turn your Android phone into a great, living, social phone," according to Tom Alison and Adam Mosseri in Facebook's newsroom. The first phone to come with Home pre-installed will be the HTC First, available exclusively from AT&T on April 12. Home will be downloadable on other Android devices, but won't have all of the features of HTC First.

"Apps aren't at the center, but people are at the center and we bought into that" said de la Vega at the event. The new Home-ready HTC First phone will run on AT&T's 4G LTE network and will cost $99.99. Tech writer Chris Taylor who heads Mashable's editorial team commented, "Great coup for HTC and AT&T -- probably the largest captive audience they've had for a phone announcement." Mark Zuckerberg noted, "By putting people first, and then apps, it's one of many small, but meaningful changes in our relationship with technology over time."

Facebook Home brings its News Feed experience to users' mobile home screen. The new Home experience includes Cover Feed, Notifications, App Launcher, Instagram and Chat Heads. The latter, a mobile messenger that allows users to reply directly to friends instantly or move a floating head image of a friend when not ready to respond, inspired strong reactions in the comments section of Mashable's live streaming of the event. Chris Taylor reacted,"'Chatheads.' -- really?" and "'Chathead.' it really is going to take a while to get used to that word." 

Caitlin Barrett, Associate Director of Verbal Identity for Interbrand and the creative lead for Naming, responds to the name Chat Heads, "It's hard to say whether Chat Heads will change behaviors and expectations the way the 'Like' button did, but the name is just as absurdly simple—and perfectly aligns with the new chat experience." 

Barrett adds, "Is it awkward? A bit, as it doesn't seem necessary to specify the parts of your friends with which you're chatting. And it doesn't fall naturally into everyday conversation: Will we talk about it like a platform? 'We talked on Chat Heads earlier today…' Or an activity? 'Let's Chat Heads later tonight.' This might very well be the point. If Facebook wants this to simply be the way we chat on Facebook, perhaps it doesn't want to take the hit by trying to brand what could easily become a generic term for this new style of chat. So is it a bad name? Certainly not. We all giggled at the iPad when it was first launched too, but as long as the functionality proves to be differentiated and useful, the name will cease to be part of the story."

What does Facebook Home for Android mean for Apple? Several commenters in Mashable's chat and on Twitter expressed new shifting interest from Apple phones to Android. 

As discussed on CNBC recently, concerns about Apple are growing. Colin Gillis of BGC Financial, CNBC's Jon Fortt and Interbrand's Jez Frampton discussed the slowdown in orders at China's Foxconn and if this is a sign of problems for Apple. Frampton observed, "In terms of the brand, there's no doubt about the fact that Apple still is one of the pacesetters in the market, Samsung are giving them a good run for their money, but this lack of innovation is a concern. To be honest we've been taught as consumers to expect the next new thing every other week almost, and now they're slow on the iPhone 5S. And what's next? Where's Apple TV?"

Gillis added, "The market is still valuing [Apple] well north of $400 billion, but the market is changing. What we're seeing is lower cost competitors are getting traction. ...For Apple to maintain their margins and to maintain the volume units, they need to keep innovating and that's an issue for the company right now."

What does it mean for Google? Commentor Lance Ulanoff asked Chris Taylor during the live chat today, "Has anyone asked specifically about Google+? Chris Taylor responded, "Nope, but this really does seem like another nail in Google+'s coffin." JoeyMartin91 commented, "If I'm Google, I'm nervous. Facebook just took my niche market and rewrapped it." Robert Stephens, founder of The Geek Squad and former CTO of Best Buy, tweeted:

QOTD "@parislemon: Facebook not forking Android -- more like spooning it."

— Robert Stephens (@rstephens) April 4, 2013

The reveal today raises a number of questions about privacy concerns, battery life and, of course, consumer interest. Understanding consumers will have many questions, Facebook has planned for trials of Home before users commit to downloading it or purchasing the HTC First pre-loaded with Home, a smart move. We'll also be following this initial post with more on Home and what it means for the marketplace in blogs to come.

Amy Edel-Vaughn is Interbrand's Community Manager.

Apple earned the number two spot on Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2012 report and the power of Apple's brand value has made the iPhone the top-selling smartphone in the world. The iPhone 5 is facing some competition this week, though.

Today the BlackBerry Z10 is officially available in the US from AT&T. The new phone, garnering positive reviews, becomes available from T-Mobile and Verizon next week. 

Samsung's S4 promises to be a competitor in the smartphone space. Shortly after Samsung's recent launch event for the new phone, Apple responded with marketing on its website claiming, "There's iPhone. And then there's everything else."

I had the pleasure of attending the S4 launch event at Radio City Music Hall in New York, which started with a Broadway-inspired performance demonstrating how the phone's features relate to everyday life. Some in attendance panned the performance as "cheesy," but I found the actual phone to be very impressive.

The screen size is a bit larger than any phone currently on the market with a great resolution at 1920 x 1080, making it a great HD streaming handheld device. The event's emcee, Will Chase, noted there is less to hold on the new phone, but much more to see, a great way to justify the large size of the screen.

Adding "group" features such as group play is a smart move. Group play allows multiple phones that are within a reasonable distance to share and stream music simultaneously in different speaker arrangements depending on how many phones are linked up. 

What I find so cool about this feature is that it does not require any kind of Wifi or hotspot; this can be done anywhere at any time as long as you have your phone charged. I can see this feature being a hit with the youth market. 

Another great feature, but also raises some questions, is the Samsung smart pause. This feature pauses the phone when you aren’t looking at it and then unpauses when you are looking again, all automated. Is it just tracking eye movement or does it look for a full head turning motion?

One of the coolest features presented at the event was "Air Gesture." The name truly expresses what it does. Move your finger in front of the screen and it recognizes this as a swipe on the screen. 

This feature utilizes an infra-red heat sensor. This device can measure temperature changes and act off of heat movements. I believe this is the first phone for consumers to have this type of sensor in it and it will be interesting to see what the hacker community comes up with for this handy sensor. 

The built-in rear camera has 13 megapixels, which is also the highest megapixels on any phone released to date. The associated features with the camera are quite useful and unique.  When recording video you can use both cameras on the front and back, enabling you to add the camera man to the video. This dual camera feature is also available for video chat. 

On the business side, the phone supports Microsoft Active Sync and in addition to supporting the widely used business mail systems, Samsung has added a very useful application called Samsung KNOX. This KNOX software can separate your applications securely so they can only be accessed via password. 

The Samsung software truly makes this device capable of supporting business and personal use at the same time with one smartphone. The hardware is superior to any other phone on the market right now and the camera features invite all kinds of creativeness to the table. The group features add a new dimension to social networking, allowing connectivity without requiring an internet connection. 

The "7 sensor innovation" is only the beginning for Samsung. These sensors can be applied to many facets for many industries. 

The smartphone sector is definitely heating up.

David Vales is a Senior Systems Engineer for Interbrand.

Self-driving cars have seen a lot of progress in the past year, but the latest represents a surprising intersection of robotics and consumer tech. Oxford University students recently demonstrated how an Apple iPad can be used as the control center for a self-driving Nissan. It can engage “autopilot” on familiar routes, avoid obstacles and pedestrians, and return control to the driver with a touch of the breaks.

Cool-factor aside, this is one of many recent examples of how consumer software and technology are finding their ways into product classes traditionally dominated by industrial heavyweights. Some near century-old giants of automotive, aerospace and manufacturing are finding new competitors in previously unrelated categories.

• The Federal Aviation Administration recently granted permission to American Airlines to use the iPad as pilots’ resource for regulations and aircraft manuals. In addition to eliminating 35 lbs. of paper from the pilots’ flight bags, it allows the airline to avoid costly aircraft retrofits with dedicated electronic flight bag consoles.
• MirrorLink, a technology that duplicates the display and touch controls of smartphones into automotive head-units, is gaining support from device and entertainment companies. This could compromise automakers' ability to market their own branded infotainment and telematics systems and maintain consistency of the driving experience.
• The increasing accessibility of 3D printing technology is threatening to disrupt the value chains of all kinds of industries. There are implications for intellectual property, labor, the size and location of plant and equipment, shipping and – perhaps most importantly – product design. 3D printers are already being used to make on-demand spare parts, prosthetics and product prototypes.

The modern computing landscape, characterized by pocket-sized devices stuffed with sensors and backed by vast cloud computing power, has changed consumers’ expectations for usability, connectivity and access to the state-of-the-art. For brands whose product lifecycles are measured in decades, it will be ever more important to develop platforms that allow their products to keep pace with the innovation happening around them.

The components of Brand Strength can be helpful tools for looking at this challenge. Some manufactures will attempt to stake out their differentiation with proprietary branded solutions, at the risk of losing relevance because of rapid obsolescence. Others will try to maintain relevance by creating transparent conduits for consumers’ existing tech ecosystems, at the risk of commoditizing their own products and compromising consistency. Successful brands in the durable goods and industrial categories will see these components not as tradeoffs, but as mutual necessities in maintaining and growing brand value.

Alex Foss is an Associate Consultant, Brand Strategy at Interbrand San Francisco.