Trademarking

There’s a lot of creativity out there in the world, but the legal landscape of naming is a unique and integral part of what I do. My partnership with Wilcox IP ensures significantly greater legal viability of the trademark candidates that I present to you. I consider them to be one of the country’s top intellectual property firms and they provide an invaluable service. Their primary role in the work that I do is to conduct preliminary legal screens on each trademark candidate. Their offerings don’t stop there however, and I’m always happy to facilitate full legal searches as well as trademark registration.

Linguistic Disaster Checks

Any given name is bound to wind up in front of someone who speaks another language than your primary market. Even if you’re just launching a product within the US, the name will likely be presented to native Spanish speakers at the very least. To ensure a name will be well-received by all who see it, I tap into a global network of linguists that screen for any undesirable associations that may come through in a particular region or language. This is always worth doing, and worth casting a wide net. You don’t want to find out years down the line as you expand into a new market that your name means something negative and will prohibit your success.

Take the Chevy Nova for example. This car sold incredibly well in the United States, but when they took it to South America, the numbers plummeted. Had they run the name by Spanish speakers, they would have learned that they were trying to sell Chevy “Doesn’t Go,” which is the literal translation of “no va” from Spanish. This anecdote is actually a marketing urban myth, but it illustrates a great point!