139: Firm Naming
This episode runs 31 min.
David Lecours and Josh Miles discuss A/E/C Firm Naming: acronyms, trademarks, and differentiation.
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Mentioned in This Episode 139: A/E/C Firm Naming
Why so many acronyms?
Why acronyms can be problematic
The importance of firm differentiation
What is a trademark?
Five kinds of trademarks:
Generic
Descriptive
Suggestive
Fanciful
Arbitrary
A/E/C firm names we admire
How to enhance an acronym name
The difference between TM and ®
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David Lecours: Hey, Josh, let’s talk about naming today. What do you think?
Josh Miles: I like it. Let’s do it.
David Lecours: I guess I should be more specific. I’m talking about like firm names, the use of acronyms and trademarks as we describe our firms.
Josh Miles: I thought we’re going to talk on how to name your puppy or your kitten or your child.
David Lecours: Well, I think so. I think it’s the universal. Some of those techniques can certainly apply. I want to remind our audience that PSM show, which is what you’re listening to, is underwritten by SMPS, whose vision is business transform through marketing leadership. Go over to SMPS.org to learn more about this great organization.
Speaker 1: This is PSM, it’s insight applied.
Josh Miles: All right, David. I was thinking as we’re talking about this, especially when it comes to names in the AEC marketplace. We have no shortage of this one thing and that is acronyms.
David Lecours: That is so true, not only for like internal marketing references, but I think what you’re referring to here is like firm names. There’s the HDRs and the HOKs and the HNTBs and that’s just the H’s. Don’t get me started on all the firms that have GO in their name. That’s not necessarily an acronym but the challenge, of course, with this becomes that they are an alphabet soup. And unfortunately, that can often mean that they lack distinction and one of the things we, of course, want to do is differentiate our firms, not sound like somebody else.
David Lecours: There’s funny stories out there, and I don’t have any evidence to back this up but I’ve heard stories of clients hiring one firm named in acronym because they got it confused with another one. They’re only like a couple of months into the project when they realized they’d actually hired the wrong firm.
Josh Miles: “Oh, yeah, when do we get to talk to Bob?” “Oh, yeah, he works for our competitor. He doesn’t work here.”
David Lecours: Right. No, it sounds similar. So, why do you think this is? Why do think all these firms are, in my opinion, kind of poorly named as acronyms?
Josh Miles: Well, I think so many of these firms started out with two guys and they added a third guy and added a fourth guy, and added a fifth guy and they started just adding the next principal’s name to the sign. And at some point, it’s just too much to manage. And years go by and decades go by, and those founding principals aren’t even … Maybe they’re retired. Maybe they’re not living any longer. Maybe they have nothing to do with the firm so they …
Josh Miles: I think it’s natural that they shortened it to these names. But the challenges like you said in the marketing industry especially in the AEC industry, we have acronyms for just about everything for ROI and SEO, and the industry itself is AEC.
David Lecours: AEC, yeah.
Josh Miles: It really just, as I say, it’s just alphabet soup that you’d start to gloss over. And especially for market to market or if you’re working internationally with different firms, you might even come across the same acronym in different states, in different markets enough to drive you crazy.
David Lecours: I know. I blame IBM. I think it may have … I don’t know if it started there. But for years, they were named International Business Machines. And admittedly, that is a bit of a mouthful and especially in today’s era, we don’t like to wait for things and so we just like to speed things up. It takes a while to type it out when you’re writing a letter, International Business Machines. It’s like many syllables. It takes a while for the person answering the phone to say.
David Lecours: So then at some point, they did sort of what Federal Express did. They said, “All right, everyone already calls us IBM. Let’s just call ourselves IBM or let’s just call ourselves FedEx.” But the brilliance of IBM was that they hired world famous identity designer, Paul Rand, to design this really iconic symbol that’s still in existence today with the lines.
David Lecours: They’d at least differentiated it with this really unique mark which I think is a plus.
Josh Miles: Yeah, and I think there’s something just sort of like friendly or casual about giving nicknames to people you work with or to friends or to family. I’m formally Joshua. But in my house, it was quickly shortened to Josh and lots of other variations on that which we won’t go into right now. But I think all the nicknames and the [inaudible 00:05:13] and the abbreviations and the, ultimately, acronyms in the professional world is kind of how you write it faster, type it faster, say it faster. And it sounds like an insider kind of language almost.
David Lecours: Yeah. That’s true. It’s a very democratic way of doing it. So, if you had four founders and you didn’t want to list all their names, it’s really easy to sort of like, “All right, we’ll take one letter from you, one from you, one from you,” and then the only decision is like what order to put them in, which I’m sure brings up a whole lot of other interesting comments about … And it should go by how it sounds, not by sort of hierarchy in my opinion.
David Lecours: But, I think it almost has become like this least common denominator or let’s … Because naming is challenging. It should be evocative, and as a result, it excites people and it also potentially scares people off in terms of names. And our industry, because of wanting to avoid lawsuits because we’re building things that affect the general public, we sometimes play it safe. And this is another example, in my mind, of playing it safe just using an acronym.
Josh Miles: I think maybe speaking of lawsuits, my trademark attorney friends would like me to include this little caveat in today’s conversation, which is, it turns out David and I are not attorneys. We are not providing any legal advice today and we highly recommend that you chat with a licensed intellectual property attorney to get legal perspective, if you’re ever considering changing the name of your firm or shortening it or how you market it when it comes to a nickname or if the logo is different from what’s registered. All of those things are great things to talk to your either state licensing board or local IP attorney.
Josh Miles: Anyhow, that’s enough of the legal disclaimer, I hope.
David Lecours: Your mileage may vary. No, it’s just that your mileage may vary. Back to the conversation. I think we’ve identified the problem. We probably know where it comes from. One of the things that I often hear from clients is like, “Well, wait. If having an acronym is not a great name choice, why are there so many, you know, like top ENR 50 firms that are using acronyms?” And I always like to remind them that correlation is not necessarily causation.
David Lecours: I think you hit on this earlier is that most of those firms didn’t start out as an acronym. It’s just through after 25 years of successful business and then maybe the public calling them that acronym that they adopted it. But typically, they don’t start out that way.
Josh Miles: Yeah, absolutely. I was trying to explain this correlation and causation thing with my kids and eating sugar yesterday.
David Lecours: Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah, like really kind of ultimately, I guess what we’re talking about is developing a trademark. And I think our position, and I won’t speak for you, but my position is that you should have a unique trademark. You should have something that you can own that sounds different than your competitors, is highly memorable. And I guess in like a perfect world, it’s a bit evocative of your positioning or maybe what you do or something that your clients or stakeholders would have this positive association when they hear your name.
David Lecours: But maybe we should clarify, since you started out on the illegal track like what exactly is a trademark?
Josh Miles: Yeah, I think if you go historically, the idea of this trademark was it was something to protect the consumer, meaning, I think it was like Bass ale, if that’s the right term. That was the very first registered trademark. And it was because when you go to buy ale from the guy down the street and they say, “Well, this is the same stuff that you liked from the next town over,” that trademark was the thing that assured you as the consumer that you’re going to get the same level of goods or services, that it was the thing that said, “Oh, no. This is exactly the same ale. It’s not just some random barrel. This is actually Bass.”
Josh Miles: In that instance, we’re talking about a logo more properly, but you can also trademark just the name itself. You don’t necessarily have to … I’d still recommend that you trademark it separately but your name itself can also be a trademark, and the legal profession has kind of categorized all these different ways of viewing different types of trademarks which I also talked a little bit about in Bold Brand 2.0 which is available on Amazon, of course.
Josh Miles: But as I was working on this chapter, my editor was like, “You know, this is, I think, possibly the most boring chapter in the entire book, but this is really great content so we have to keep it in here because it’s really important stuff. But it’s just a little bit of a snoozer.”
David Lecours: Yeah. Well, you mentioned trademarks sort of initially came about to protect the consumer but I would also say that they are also designed to protect the company. The word itself is this idea of marking your trade. If you were a potter back in ancient Babylonia and you had a unique pot, you would want a mark to that trade by having some sort of stamp underneath that would identify your goods and differentiate them from another.
David Lecours: And so today, similarly, we want to mark our trade, and I think it’s especially important in professional services because we don’t have a product. Yes, we may end up creating a building in some form or another but the process is really what we’re selling. And so, I think we need to have really compelling trademarks.
David Lecours: And so, I know in your book you’ve identified four kinds of trademarks. Actually, let’s go with five. I just thought of another one. And let’s talk about those. The first one you mentioned is generic. Maybe say a little bit more about that. What does that mean?
Josh Miles: Yeah, these first two categories are the ones that even if you take this to a trademark attorney, they’re going to tell you these are kind of difficult to get through an actual registered trademark. I guess just to back up a little further, my understanding of this again is kind of layperson who’s worked in the space a lot is you can trademark something both with your state and federal. When you get that federal trademark, that’s when you can use that little circle R after that we lovingly, in the advertising and design world, call it the R ball.
Josh Miles: But you can’t use that unless you actually have a federal registered trademark. You can put TM on anything like I can say, some phrase TM, and that just means that I’m showing you that I intend to claim that but there’s no legal standing for that claim.
David Lecours: Yeah, until it’s federally registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office. And so if any of you guys are kind of nerding out on this, you can go to USPTO.gov and read more and find out the process for that federal registration.
Josh Miles: Yeah, and you can also nerd out a little further. You can even get on their website and search for trademarks. So if you have a name, then you can go to that trademark search tool and see if someone else has already claimed that trademark. It’s a really handy resource.
Josh Miles: Anyhow back [crosstalk 00:13:09] generic. Generic is like if you and I were going to create a company and we were going to call it the Indianapolis and San Diego Podcasting Company, that’s generic. It’s basically just literally stating location and name of the business or something like that. [crosstalk 00:13:30] It’s really, really tough to trademark that unless you’ve been going for so long that the market recognizes that distinctly as your brand.
Josh Miles: So, International Business Machines is actually a generic trademark. But they’ve been going for so long that everyone knows that is IBM, and that of course is a registered trademark of IBM.
David Lecours: Right. It has this sort of common law, historical precedence.
Josh Miles: Indeed.
David Lecours: And so that’s generic. We can differentiate that a little bit with number two which is descriptive.
Josh Miles: Descriptive is typically when you say like Bob’s Burgers or Miller Pipeline or something that’s like your name and then a product or service together. Again, this is pretty difficult to trademark right out of the gates. If you were going to launch a brand with that name, you probably could not get a registered trademark right away but if you’ve been in existence for a few years, it is possible to get that registered.
David Lecours: And so sometimes, people do things to help prove that their company has been in existence like they’ll send a registered letter to themselves. And so then the US Post Office stamps it with the indicia stamp date kind of thing. Yeah, just do something if that’s the road you’re going down to protect yourself down the road.
Josh Miles: There’s also this lovely tool called the Internet Wayback Machine or the Internet Archive. And if you have used the name or the logo digitally on your website since a certain year, you can always go back to that to prove that that logo or that name existed back then too. It’s just another way to demonstrate prior use or first use.
David Lecours: Is that a URL or is that an app, or what is that?
Josh Miles: Yeah, that’s a website. If you Google Internet Archive or Wayback Machine, you should find that probably as the first result.
David Lecours: All right, cool.
Josh Miles: It’s pretty amazing, really.
David Lecours: Yeah. That sounds fun. Don’t put anything on the internet that you don’t want to live forever. It’s the takeaway there, which I think we already know.
Josh Miles: Internet is forever.
David Lecours: Bad pictures, yeah, college photos at parties. Number three, suggestive trademark. Oh, I like the sound of this one.
Josh Miles: Yes. It is quite suggestive. A good example of this would be like Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s kind of more of an active or suggesting what it is without being quite so literal as the generic term. So where the generic version might be sugar donuts and the descriptive might be dough’s donuts, the suggestive is Dunkin’ Donuts.
David Lecours: I like that. It’s right. It’s active. It’s a little bit unique. It conjures up an image, and so now, I think we’re sort of going down like in terms of hierarchy, we’re moving towards what we think, at least from the legal profession, are easier to register. And I would also [inaudible 00:17:02] probably more effective names. Is that fair to say?
Josh Miles: Yeah. I definitely think so. And I think the fourth and fifth could maybe be a tie. And we’ll talk about why that is in terms of protectability and preference. But this first two definitely are pretty generic and the third one is just slightly better than generic but in a different category.
David Lecours: Fourth is fanciful. What does that mean?
Josh Miles: These, a lot of times, are the ones that are fun mouth sounds or made-up words. Pepsi is a good one of those because that’s … As the lore goes, it’s kind of the sound that the can makes when you open it. It says Pepsi.
David Lecours: I didn’t know that.
Josh Miles: Some of these other made-up names, Google is actually referenced to [inaudible 00:17:59] called googol, but these are fun, playful and made-up name. Most pharmaceuticals would probably fall in the fanciful category.
David Lecours: Right. And I’m thinking about Yahoo or some of these like computer mash-up names sometimes would fall in this space.
Josh Miles: Yeah, exactly.
David Lecours: So, they don’t have an inherent meaning other than describing that company which is kind of what we want. That’s kind of what we wanted, like it would be great to have this word that means nothing else out in the world except an association with our company. Then you don’t have to fight with any sort of associations that might be negative in someone’s mind.
Josh Miles: Yeah. I mean, assuming someone else has already made up the same word and is using it in a different industry, then I think you’re very clear to move forward with a fanciful made-up fun kind of name, which is not exactly adjectives that we would use to describe the AEC industry. It’s maybe not always good enough fit but just from a practical standpoint really could work nicely.
David Lecours: Right. Okay, and this leads us to the next one which is arbitrary. And your example is one that actually is a perfect example for a name that was used in one industry and not the other, and I won’t bury the lede, it’s Apple. Apple, for many years, had this sort of gentleman’s agreement with Apple Records, the famous Beatles record label, that they weren’t going to get into music. And they were kind of more focused on technology and initially just computers. But eventually, obviously that changed and Apple basically took over the entire music industry. And I don’t know exactly how they resolved that with Apple Records, but I’m sure there were some lawyers involved.
Josh Miles: Indeed. So, I guess the lesson or the theory there, not so much on the music side, is that arbitrary type of trademark is anytime you’re using a thing to describe your company that is what it is not. If you’re going to have a geotechnical firm and you wanted to call it anteater or aardvark or dog or its name for an animal and not for the service that it is, that would be arbitrary. That word has meaning. It’s a real word but it’s not how you’re using it.
David Lecours: Yeah. Let’s think of some examples of some good names within the AEC or maybe we could say a couple of names and then identify which category they fall into. One of them, I’m thinking of is this firm called Arcadis. They are an engineering firm. And I think that that name comes from sort of madeup land, kind of a play on Arcadia. It’s kind of a fanciful name that is also arbitrary. It’s not that they’re all in that like they’re not literally creating this. They’re not a movie company making up this land of Arcadis.
David Lecours: And I guess one of the things I like about that is I make this instant association with their symbol or their mark, their visual trademark or visual identity, which is this stylized dinosaur with a tail that becomes a swirl. It’s just a very unique name and logo for an AEC firm. For that reason, I like it.
Josh Miles: Yeah, that’s a good one. And I think their whole brand wraps around that nicely. One of the ones that we talked about earlier that I always enjoyed was one of the former projects that I worked on with my last agency called Idibri which was a play off of a bright idea. So, they did all of this experienced design and acoustics and kind of anywhere people get together to enjoy an event together. They did all the things that wrapped around that.
Josh Miles: But again, that was a total fanciful like made-up word that was kind of a mash up of the words of bright idea which is I-D-I-B-R-I. And then the logo mark kind of played off of all the I’s in that word as well. It’s kind of a fun way to differentiate itself from their former … They were kind of a result of a reverse merger that split out and that former company was called Acoustic Dimensions, so a little bit more in the suggestive category before, kind of like Dunkin’ Donuts.
David Lecours: And I think that’s probably what you just hit on is why I think this topic is relevant for you guys, our audience, and that yeah, your firm may be named right now and you may not have control over it. But if you listen to this episode so far, you’re somewhat interested in this topic. And there are a lot of mergers that happened and acquisitions.
David Lecours: And so at some point in your career, you might be involved in one of those. Most likely you will be, and so in that case, you might have an opportunity to get involved in the naming aspect. A couple of other names I’m thinking of one is Array Architects, an arbitrary name. They focus in the healthcare. But I just like that AA, the Array Architects just flows nicely. The AR and the AR have a nice association.
David Lecours: And then one other one is Populous, the architecture firm that focuses … Their tagline is about creating places where people gather. So that means like designing stadiums and convention centers. And they’re always involved with designing some of the most iconic buildings for the Olympics. And so that name is suggestive, Populous, right? So, population where people gather and I think that’s a really cool … Yeah, it’s a great name.
Josh Miles: And I think it’s not that if you have … I almost said if you’re stuck with, that’d mean that might be the best way to look at it. But if your firm has an acronym as a name where that’s the shorthand that everyone knows you as, there are still things that you can do to kind of differentiate that further. What would be kind of your first recommendation if your firm is an acronym and you’re wanting to at least refresh that brand or thinking about how to differentiate?
David Lecours: I think we alluded to earlier where we mentioned the IBM examples. Just make sure that your symbol is really distinctive. Don’t just put the three letters in a box and make it red because that is going to instantly make you one of many. Make a unique word mark. Hire a brand identity expert to design letter forms that are unique to only you and that are stylized in a way that like instantly that’s your firm.
Josh Miles: I think even if you look at the HOKs and the HTRs of the world, those are two that at face value, it’s just an acronym but if you look at how those two for example have treated their identity, it’s actually kind of playful or very creative. The HOK, the letters bounce up and down, and HTR kind of breaks apart the letter forms to the most minimal shapes or kind of all belongs together as a unit. And again, I think that helps do a little bit more with something that otherwise could have been a little bit more forgettable.
David Lecours: Yeah, and that differentiates them from HKS, another prominent architecture firm. There was sort of this trend for a while. I’ve been seeing it lately of like including a number in your name. There was this CH2M Hills before they got bought out. And there’s like the NV5s and the TK1SCs. That is at least something that kind of like breaks up the alphabet soup, and it’s a little bit unexpected.
David Lecours: Even like calling your firm named after the founder, even after the founder is long gone, it’s fine so long as that name has some … It just sounds great. Maybe it evokes things. I’ve always thought the name Black & Veatch was incredibly powerful. It just got this very strong consonants of the Black and then the, I don’t know, something about the Veatch. It just sounds great. And so, yeah, stick with your name if it’s evocative of something and it sounds good.
Josh Miles: When you and I were talking earlier, you mentioned WSP too. Can you describe that a little bit?
David Lecours: Yeah. So, check that logo out if you go to their URL of where they’ve taken the tops and sort of bottoms of the letter forms and chop them off. But it’s still very readable. You can just go to WSP.com and it’s a real unique distinctive mark that stands out.
Josh Miles: Yeah, I like it. You think these acronyms are going away anytime soon?
David Lecours: I don’t know. We can try our best, but it’s hard to say. We’ll check back in, in about five years.
Josh Miles: This would be a good one to revisit and see if the trend has gone to a different direction like all the numbers you mentioned maybe from the 90s that all those names that added the digits.
David Lecours: Yeah. So, you made a note that I think is important, to say more about possibly combining your maybe generic acronym with a tagline.
Josh Miles: Yeah. I don’t know if I have an example off the top of my head. But I think if you’ve got … There is a firm in Cincinnati that I’m thinking of actually called SHP. And they always followed that with leading design. I don’t know if that was formally part of their registered name but anytime you saw SHP logo, it’s a leading design after it. I thought that was an interesting way to carry that trademark with something that was a little bit more memorable. And I think that’s good.
David Lecours: Cool. I think we’ve kind of captured this topic pretty well. Anything else you want to add or summarize with?
Josh Miles: Well, I think we’re going to name our new puppy B&L.
David Lecours: Barking and loud. [crosstalk 00:29:38]
Josh Miles: Excellent. Yeah, I like it.
David Lecours: Are you getting a new puppy?
Josh Miles: It’s been on the list for a while here but I think if my kids have anything to do with it, we’ll be naming the dog after a Hamilton character.
David Lecours: Nice.
Josh Miles: I believe Lafayette is [crosstalk 00:29:59] but we’ll see.
David Lecours: Very cool. All right, well, take us home, Josh.
Josh Miles: All right. Well, thanks for chatting with us today on all the naming and acronyms and trademark stuff. This is exciting, at least, it’s exciting to us. If you have a topic that you would find more exciting, please head over to PSM.show. And head over to that website to drop us a line. That’s all for today’s episode. From David Lecours and myself, Josh Miles, we’ll see you next time.
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