A Lawyers Guide to Branding
Lawyers are decidedly NOT experts in branding (at least I am not), but a great deal of our work is in protecting our clients’ brands.
To address this area, I asked permission from Tim Negris to republish an excellent article he wrote on the subject. Tim has a deep knowledge of the IT industry, having been (among other things) VP, Server Marketing at Oracle and VP, Software Sales and Marketing at IBM. Tim is one of the best strategic thinkers I know, and gives great insight into the nuances of brands and branding.
Here is Tim’s Article, in full, as it appeared on the website: America’s Best Business Practices:
Brands and Branding Are Not the Same
Even if a business, big or small, has great branding – effective name, slogan, color scheme, etc. – they still might not have a great brand. In the language of marketing, branding is syntax (structure) and brand is semantics (meaning). A company’s “meaning” is its place in the marketplace and the customer’s business or life.
Ideally, a company should have a strong brand that is supported by strong branding, but many wildly successful companies have goofy names, ugly colors, and tortuous slogans, but they have great brands. That is, they do a great job of communicating their meaning – best quality, trend setter, most innovative, longest history, most locations, caring people, etc. In music, it is called a “hook”.
Small business start-ups especially need to think not just about who they are, what they look like, and what they do, but also what they want to mean to their customers, what is their hook. If they have a strong brand, the branding will often follow easily.When the 7-11 convenience store chain was just starting out, they were competing with suburban supermarkets and urban corner stores, both of which were typically open for the about the same hours as most people worked, 9-5. Their “hook” was the customer convenience of longer hours, 7am to 11pm, and that drove their branding. The name said it all. They didn’t need a slogan, the logo was the name, and the logo and colors were clear on a small lighted sign – a necessity before daylight and after dark.
When the other stores realized the power of convenience over selection, quality and other brand promises, and started keeping longer hours, so 7-11 went one better and commenced round the clock operation in most locations. Note, they did not change their name to 24-7; they didn’t need to because they already owned the convenience brand and everybody would quickly learn that they never closed. Then the other stores went to always open. The corner store was largely dead by then and the supermarkets asserted the “low price and selection at any time” brands. 7-11 countered this by actually promoting their smaller physical size in redefining convenience as “fast in and out”. This was especially effective once the supermarkets had to start competing with big box retailers by getting even bigger.
7-11′s success spawned myriad directly competitive imitators who echoed every one of 7-11′s brand promise, plus offered gasoline, which 7-11 was not yet selling. But, 7-11′s massive global reach and superior logistics enabled them to easily add gasoline to their product mix, to lower their prices and to offer fresh snacks and sandwich meals. The latter also allowed them to then compete with fast food take-out places and strengthen their brand by broadening the meaning of convenience to include faster, cheaper breakfast and lunch.
7-11 started out with strong branding. Their name/logo was easy to say, remember, and see on a small lighted sign, and their red and green color scheme carried the strong subliminal message of “stop and go”. But, they became and remain successful through strong branding, by staying current with the meaning of consumer convenience – always there, everywhere, low prices, known quality, fast, and thorough coverage of common urgent needs (gas, drinks, snacks, aspirin, tampons, etc.)
The lesson this should teach the start-up is to know and communicate what you want to mean to your customers. What it should teach established companies of all sizes is to learn and know how to change and extend your meaning to anticipate your customers’ changing needs and to stay ahead of the competition.
Good branding – valuable. Great brand – priceless.
In addition to the above article by Tim Negris, an excellent article on the subject by Mike Clough, also on the site America’s Best Business Practices, can be found here: “Branding is the Key to Differentiation.”
For lawyers who protect a client’s intellectual property, it is important to understand “branding” from the point of view of business people–our clients.
I think you do know something about branding. Think about your wild successes at branding SCO as a worthless patent troll.
:) I should have known someone would find a SCO-related angle here…
Truthfully, I still do not comprehend the anger toward SCO that so many people seem to harbor.
If SCO sues IBM, so what? IBM is fully capable of defending itself without help from the Linux community.
If SCO claims Linux infringes UNIX copyrights, so what? These kinds of claims are raised every day in courthouses across the country.
What made SCO different from every other company seeking a licensing fee or alleging infringement?
SCO did attack every Linux user and developer personally by claiming falsely that they (SCO) would be owed license fees for property that they (SCO) never owned in the first place and also claiming that Linux users and developers stole code from UNIX – which did not happen other than SGI’s contribution and one accidental removal of a BSD copyright that is owned by the University of California not SCO. Your friend Herbert Jackson was wrong in his assessment of “billions” of dollars, because he doesn’t know code or facts. Schemers rarely succeed in get-rich quick schemes,no matter how many suckers they get to join them.
The public statements, the deceit, the games and the personal attacks were all SCO’s doing. Please don’t be so disingenuous as to make this all seem so “surprising”. Rewriting history was something that communists do and I hardly think that’s becoming of someone who claims to support freedom.
Last I checked – we believe in facts and truth. Your personal perceptions don’t stand up in court, and that is what the legal system is for – you either trust in it, or you do not. If you do not – then you don’t really trust in our system of Justice, which makes your faith in our legal system questionable, and perhaps is a problem for personal introspection and career review.
SCO asked for and received the anger it brought upon itself. It went about trying to make the world angry – and succeeded by attempting to do just that. In their plan to self-destruct – they were successful. You should tell Mr. Yarro that he was totally successful in being a respecter of no person to his own utter self-destruction. He did achieve the ends he sought.
Have a nice day.
SCO did and does not simply claim that Linux infringes Unix copyrights. It did and does claim that users of Linux (such as myself) and people copying Linux and giving it to others (such as myself) violate the law.
And SCO threatened and threatens users of Linux (such as myself) with lawsuits if they do not pay protection money to SCO.
The allegations of copyright infringement were and are false and were known or must have been known to be false while those allegations were made.
And there are people (such as myself) who think that those who were or are responsible for these activities should be legally held responsible – to the full extent of the law.
Andreas, I do not agree with your comment about SCO posted above. Further, I am no longer able to give a point-for-point rebuttal to Linux-related arguments, and so I will not do that here.
However in the spirit of continued openness I do believe you have a right to voice your opinion, and so your comment is posted here.
“Truthfully, I still do not comprehend the anger toward SCO that so many people seem to harbor. ”
It’s quite simple…
First SCO (by way of person named Darl McBride) claimed to own Unix…
“There are two major operating systems in play around the world–Unix and Windows. Microsoft owns Windows, and we own Unix.”-
This has been proven in a court of law to be false. The Linux community has claimed this to be false since day one.
Next Mr McBride stated that Linux infringes on Unix..
“We believe that Linux infringes on our Unix intellectual property and other rights,” SCO’s letter said. “We intend to aggressively protect and enforce those rights.”
Other outlandish claims about owning C++
“And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++. It was interesting to see the depth of Caldera’s intellectual capital.”
I believe because of the quantity of claims by SCO, by way of Darl McBride, and how quickly that those claims were debunked was mostly the reason people became angry with SCO… and consequently angry with the people associated with SCO.