Thursday, February 28, 2008

Choosing a Brand

There are various ways to choose a brand for your product. From my observation, some of the time tested methods that make a good name are:

1) Easy to remember and spell
2) Requires least explanation
3) Describes product benefit (customer experience)
4) No more than three syllable
5) It's fun to say

It may optionally start with a strong consonant such as B, C, D, G, K, P, Q, T

However, not every brand is eligible to be a registered trademark. A trademark shouldn't describe the product concerned. For example, if you are selling food you can't trademark 'Delicious' which describes the product. Let's review how some companies get their brand:

1) Microsoft comes from the word MICROcomputer SOFTware. The mark is distinctive.
2) HP comes from the founding partners of Hewlett and Packard.
3) Apple for computers is distinctive because it is the name of a fruit (not related to computers)

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Increased Foreign Trademark Applications in Malaysia

Foreigners have more confidence in conducting business in Malaysia when 13,605 foreign trademark applications are received last year compared to 12,840 foreign trademark applications from the previous year.

MyIPO director, Kamel Mohamad said, the applications are mainly from first world countries such as USA, Japan and Europe.

"During the same period, 17,382 foreign trademarks are registered compared with 10,108 from the previous year."

"The uprising trend shows that many foreign firms have intention to invest or commercialize their product in our country, " he said when meeting Utusan Malaysia today.

According to him, 8,108 local trademark are registered compared with 5,651 from the previous year.

When asked about patent applications, Kamel said, ninety percent of applications received are from foreign countries. He mentioned that a lack of exposure among businessman, inventors and researchers contributed to this situation.

Translated from Utusan Malaysia, Feb 18.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Free Handphone Calls ... but there's a catch

Imagine if you can use your hand phone to make free calls... but there's a catch. You shall agree to receive sms advertisement. All you need to do is to send a request for sms advertisement of a topic of your choice, such as hypermarket, IT or movie. Then you will receive a related sms advertisement with a free talk time. Hence, you can then make free calls because your calls are paid by the advertiser. Any takers? This plan is created by my client who filed a patent for this plan.