In case you hadn’t heard, “carb” is out, over and done for, and “zero” is in – or at least it was last year.
Those are among the key findings in the 2005 Trends in Trademarks report, an annual project of Philadelphia law firm Dechert L.L.P. and partner Glenn Gundersen that analyzes what is being registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Since 1992, Gundersen, co- chairman of the firm’s intellectual property group, has analyzed the words that companies and entrepreneurs choose for new products and for service or marketing campaigns for existing ones.
Over the years, he has tracked not only the hot words of the moment but which ones fall out of favor, how closely trademark applications follow economic cycles, and which cities, states and countries have the most applications.
“In terms of marketing trends,” Gundersen said in the report on 2004 applications, “this year’s shooting star was the word ‘carb’ – filings for new low-carb products exploded in early 2004, then sputtered to almost nothing by year’s end.”
Gundersen noted that “for evidence Americans lack a certain stick-to-it-iveness when it comes to dieting, one need look no further than the rise and fall of carb marks.” But if “carb” is “down for the count,” as Gundersen put it, and with the word “diet” “offering no distinctiveness, was there another way to convey that a product had nothing a dieter might want to avoid? Zero, the ultimate nonentity, suddenly became numero uno, with applications tripling from 2003 to 2004.”
Among the other words that suddenly gained popularity in trademarks last year were those referring to gambling, gaming and casinos, “and huge increases containing the word ‘poker,’ or for products or services related to poker,” the report said.
Trademarks including the word “poker” more than tripled from 77 in 2003 to 282 in 2004. Trademarks for poker-related goods and services shot from 58 to 296 in the same years.
“Those numbers are extraordinary,” Gundersen said in an interview. “It’s an enormous increase. The interesting thing will be when we look in a year or two to see if this was a fad, and people have moved on to something else.”
Gundersen said there is a remarkable correlation between trademark filings and the overall economy.
For instance, from 1992 through 2000, the number of applications rose every year compared with the year before and hit an all-time high in March 2000 – the same month the Nasdaq peaked. Applications did not begin rising again, compared with the previous year, until 2003.
“When the bubble burst, the new business launches diminished and companies throttled back on new-product plans, and that retrenchment immediately translated into fewer trademark filings,” the 2005 report said.
Gundersen said Trends in Trademarks is based on the premise that companies and individuals file applications not only for marks they may use immediately, but also for those they want to use months or years from now.
That means “that new trademark filings provide an insight into the minds of marketers,” he said in the report. “You can look at new applications and see what companies think will appeal to consumers in the coming months or years.”
So what does Dechert’s report tell people who are paid to help companies devise brand names? Peter Madden, president of AgileCat, a Philadelphia marketing, public relations and branding firm, found the report an interesting study that tells him something good marketers should already know: Don’t just add the hottest word of the moment to your product and think you’ve got a winner.
“Smart marketers are always coming up with a new category, being No. 1 in that category, and dominating that category,” Madden said.
