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Apple’s Itunes Advertising is a Text Book Example of Good Trademark Selection and Usage
© Cheryl Hodgson 2007 | Posted on October 24, 2007
“Have you noticed something that is not there to be noticed?” Jack Sparrow--Pirates of the Caribbean, At World’s End.
Next time you drive down the highway and see one of those dancing silhouettes grooving to the I Tunes coming through the white headset, take a closer look. What’s missing? What is not there? It’s the word “APPLE.” What is there on the billboard or in the magazine ad to let you know the brand owner? It's logo, the now famous “bitten apple” silhouette.
Apple, the computer company was able to move from computers to the sale of music devices in one swift moment, without even using the equally famous word mark APPLE. At the time of launch, a long standing legal dispute between Apple and the Beatles’ Apple Records over use of the mark APPLE for music was clouding the skies. Use this example to learn how to brand your own new product or service.
Remember these pointers:
- Choose not just a great word mark, but a logo that can be used in marketing an advertising , with and without the word mark. Over time, as sales increase, and public awareness grows, the logo can become as well known as the word it represents.
- “Arbitrary” marks can help your business and its products develop one of the strongest, most legally protectible brands possible. Use of an otherwise generic term like “apple” in non descriptive manner, (computers and music devices), unrelated to its generic meaning (in this case for a fruit) is a great trademark choice.
- Think carefully about the ability to expand use of the brand for other seemingly unrelated goods and services. When APPLE sold it’s first computer, and agreed in a “consent to use” agreement to limit its use of the term when the Beatles complained many years ago, little did anyone know that APPLE would one day be the largest on-line seller of sound recordings.
The I Pod has helped start a revolution, but the owner of its mark, APPLE has been around a lot longer. The APPLE computer captured the imagination of a generation when it’s first clunky box launched in 1984. Next time you see the white apple, remember, "What is not seen is often as important as what is!"
1 Comment »
May 13th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Great! Thank you very much! I always wanted to write in my blog something like that. Can I take part of your post to my site? Of course, I will add backlink? Regards