My wife told me the other day, “Do you realize that some people use name brands to describe a product?” She noticed when she was talking to her mom in Indonesia, her words for certain products like diapers and baby shampoo, were replaced with words like “Pampers” and “Johnson”. She went to get all of that from “Carrefour”, the Costco-like supermarket. Indeed when I tried to remember my childhood, I also associated the name brands because they were so popular. If I wanted milk, I would ask for “Ultra”, a locally made boxed milk with artificial flavouring (this was the 70’s). I heard my dad said grab the “Mandom” for the after-shave. When he smoked, he asked for a “Marlboro”.
We speculated the reason why we use name brand is because the language we use is sometimes too vague. When we ask someone to buy a diaper, there are few to choose from. To avoid any confusion, we just say the specific brand and it’s instant clarification. Why don’t we do this in the English language? My thinking is that we’ve grown weary of commercialism and product brain-washing, we purposely avoid using specific brand names. However, we do have a specific brand loyalty in our minds. For example, when I say I’m going to get milk, I will quietly go to the back of the supermarket and pick up an “Alta Dena”, instead of the generic brand.
Do you associate a specific brand with your favourite product?
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I know I do. It’s easier that way because most people have heard of name brand stuff so they know exactly what you are talking about and then you can move on from there explaining differences.
I agree that the brand name is used for clarification but I also think it has to do with technology. For example, pampers was probably the first disposable diaper (or at least the most popular). Xerox was the copier. VCR won over Beta. I use the term “Tivo” even though I have a DVR provided by Comcast. I don’t have a habit of calling everyday items like milk or butter by it’s brand name.
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@blueyes:
Exactly. It’s instant recognition that people need.
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@Rachel:
Yes, that is certainly true. It’s just in some parts of the world, advertising is a huge part of everyday life. So, he who has the most/best ad, win the product recognition. They don’t necessarily have to be the first.
I think this is common to every language. In French too, we use a Kleenex, frigidaire, wear Levis etc. Funny part is “we have a Coke” even though it’s Pepsi!
Carrefour (“crossroads”) is French, didn’t know it existed in Indonesia.
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Hi Zhu.
I actually never looked up what Carrefour means. Thanks for letting me know. I knew it was French, though. Is it also a big supermarket there too?
They have it in Dubai too… weird. Uh… the only ones I can think of that I use are ‘Qtip’… and uh.. yeah that’s all I got. hehe I say tissues where some people would ask for a Kleenex. I’m not that much of a brand person though once I learn that I like a particular brand I’m very loyal. But I don’t pick something just because it’s from a particular brand…
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Hi Reggy.
Come to think about it, I don’t really have brand loyalty either. But there are certain brands that I support such as Toshiba laptops, Honda cars, or Canon cameras. Those companies have enough selection to make “loyalty” an easy commitment.
I know what you mean. I would refer to tape as Scotch Tape. Let me see… cola as Coke (even for Pepsi Cola) and search engines as Google… as in have you ‘googled ‘it?
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I think big business is out there conditioning us to use generic terms in an effort to protect their trademarks because when a brand name becomes so synonymous with the product itself, trademark protection can be withdrawn by the government.
When I worked at a newspaper, I received a letter from the Velcro company reminding me that I should refer to their product as Velcro brand looped fabric connectors because they were trying to protect the trademark.
So, Frisbee, Kleenex, Dumpster, TiVo, Google, Coke, Velcro brands all try really hard to protect their trademarks, so they educate us to instead call them flying discs, facial tissues, garbage containers, digital video recorders, search engines, colas, looped fabric connectors, etc.
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Some states (maybe some countries?) always say “Coke” when they want a soda, some always says “Pepsi,” some some just use the generic term soda pop, or even break that down to choose from soda or pop. I’ve heard that if you go to a restaurant and order a “coke” but they only have pepsi products and they bring you out a peps i without telling you it’s a coke, the coke company could sue them and there’s actually people out there who’s job it is to make sure companies don’t sell Pepsi as coke or vise versa. In my opinion they shouldn’t win the lawsuits for anymore than the price of the soda. If that’s the common term of the employee or the county, it’s not the companies fault, if anyones fault it’s the Coke or Pepsi company for branding their products too strongly… They should actually have to pay a frivolous lawsuit fee in my opinion… It seems they cause the product to be called a certain thing, then they sue people for doing it too well.
A lot of people also call Kleenex the tissue name… In fact, it’s extremely rare that I notice anyone saying “tissue.”
I see some other people mentioned this stuff a bit in the comments already too… Oh well… hehe
Yay. We both like Canon Cameras =D
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@CK:
Actually, for Scotch tape, in some countries the local brand (generic) is much more common, so they don’t call it by the brand name. So not all brands get to enjoy wide recognition. And yes, I’ve “googled” and “ebayed” stuff before. 🙂
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@HaleyHughes:
That’s an interesting one with Velcro calling you. But who really invented velcro? I thought the Vulcans or Men In Black aliens did? 😉
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@David:
The Coke for Pepsi thing is really bizarre. It’s not like over here in California every time I say “coke” the waiter would say “Is Pepsi ok?” They’ve got some competition issue to deal with.
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@fragileheart:
Yeah, Canon-ize me!
[…] reading Jane’s post, I thought I’d follow up to my previous post on brands by doing “Fun with Brands” for my typical […]
Using name brands as if they were generics is the bane of companies wishing to maintain their trademarks, in the UK we talk about aspirin as a generic painkiller and we don’t vacuum our homes, we “hoover” them. Google is desperate for the verb “to Google” not to become a generic term for “to search” as soon as a trademark attorney says it has become part of the vernacular they’ll lose their capital G.
db
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Hey David,
That’s an interesting way to look at the lowercase g for Google. People have only speculated how it looks like the infinity symbol. Some even said it’s simply looks better with small g. Visually verb-ing Google does make good sense.
Actually, I’d forgotten that Google is using that little g, they could actually undermine their case for trademark retention if it becomes common knowledge that they begin the word with a lower case g, then no judge is going to side with them if they try to insist journalists and other writers use “to Google” as opposed to “to google”.
db
David Bradley’s last blog post..Vapor Trails
Will they be that petty? If the usage is not hurting Google’s image, I highly doubt they’ll insist.
Maybe it’s different in the US, but in the UK, companies insist that publications user upper case initials for their trademarked brand names. For instance, you cannot discuss the anticancer drug paclitaxel by its brand name as “taxol” it must be with a capital T for Taxol. Publications are forever print notices about such incidences of trademark breaches. Like I said, if a company doesn’t keep on top of such things it risks losing its trademark. The Google example is slightly different because you cannot Google something on a site such as Ask or Yahoo, but you can ask for taxol and be given a generic paclitaxel compound. If I ask for a coke, that should be with a capital C, but if I ask for a cola, they could bring me the bargain basement version, Pepsi, or Coke.
db
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