Online Branding Blog – reactorr.com

Brand Payday

There’s a variety of ways to measure your online branding efforts, but nothing compares to the status of becoming a verb. Its an elite status that few amount to, and sets the top tier brands apart from the pack.

A lot of these brand verbs seems to be tied to technology, you can google something,  MSN or skype me, or tweet about something. Seems the verb transition for branding is online mostly, although you can xerox a copy or tivo a show too.

Some of have said that allowing a brand become a verb erodes brand value, although its not clear how that could be. If you have people using your brand name as a verb it seems like free marketing. Kleenex, Rollerblade and Band-Aid are a few offline examples.

There was a time when branding was about obsessing over its unique selling point (USP) to determine its positioning and how it would be perceived. Now we have a brand’s success often determined by how it might enhance a consumers’ world through its behavior. This is the bridge to making it a verb.

The power of a brand as a verb has one risk known as genericide, which means when a term is so prevalent, or generic, that it no longer sticks to a single company. Haven’t thought of any examples, but it can mostly be protected with trademarks.

Here’s a Bing spoof ad of what they’re up against.