Kleenex Brand Tissue Has a Different Type of Branding Problem

I would think that it’s a fair assessment to say that most brands would love for the mass population the be aware if them, especially when it comes to top-of-mind awareness. Let’s say that you want a refreshing cola beverage on a hot day…what is it that you want? You’re going to make a photocopy of something at work, so you tell your buddy that you’re going to go “what” it?

The problem is that brands like Coke and Xerox — plus a slew of others including Band-Aid, Frisbee, and Kleenex — are just that. Brands.

More importantly, they are all registered trademarks and not meant to be used generically to describe similar products or services. Using a registered trademark as a generic term can be referred to in several ways: a genericized trademark, a synecdoche, proprietary eponyms, a generic descriptor, or a colloquial description just to name a few.

Now, I’ve got to admit that I am very guilty of this offense. For example, when I go to a restaurant and order a “Coke,” I don’t really care what cola I am brought. You would think that all those advertising classes in college would have beat that out of me, but they didn’t.

So, what’s the issue with using a registered trademark as a generic descriptor? Actually, it’s a big issue.

Let me throw out a few terms: aspirin, thermos, and zipper. Those all used to be registered trademarks, but all lost legal protection due to the overuse of the brand names as generics. They are now exactly that — generics. When a trademark becomes generic, it can be country-specific; what is legally protected in one country might be used as a generic in another.

I came across an ad recently as I was flipping through an issue of Advertising Age magazine that spoke to this very problem. To summarize the ad as briefly as I can, when you sneeze and need a tissue, do you ask for a tissue? Or do you ask for something else?

 

You may not realize it, but by using the name Kleenex® as a generic term for tissue, you risk erasing our coveted brand name that we’ve worked so hard for all these years. Kleenex® is a registered trademark and should always be followed by a ® and the words ‘Brand Tissue’. Just pretend it’s in permanent marker.

The ad’s copy is to the point and I like the usage of white space. Nice graphic of the trademark being erased, too, and it illustrates the point.

Now, while I agree that the ® should be used when referencing a registered trademark, I am against it in some social channels (like this blog post, for example), because I don’t think the symbol reads well in a casual medium. Just imagine a ® at the end of every brand name used in this post. This post wouldn’t read quite the same. Then you have the issue of a site like Twitter where you’re limited to the number of characters you can use. That being said, I will definitely work on using registered trademarks to only refer to those specific products.

I’ll leave you with a fun fact that you may not know — up until World War I, heroin was a registered trademark of what is now known as the Bayer company.

 

Tagged as: Ad Age, colloquial description, generic descriptor, genericized trademark, Kleenex Brand Tissue, proprietary eponyms, synecdoche