Brand and trademark confusion

I was presenting this past week at an SME event and also on the bill was a trademark and IP lawyer. There was lots of great, useful information but as I listened to his talk it became obvious just how misleading the language around brand can be.

Businesses are often told that they need to trademark the brand. Well, actually you can’t. You can trademark a logo and you can trademark a name, but they are markers of the brand. The brand is the result of everything you are doing in your business, of the promises you keep – and you can’t trademark that.

It might be semantics, but I think it’s much more important. As long as the language of brand and trademarks doesn’t call a spade a spade it will be hard for businesses to sift through the morass and focus on what matters.

Your logo is your logo. Your name is your name. Your marketing is your marketing. And they are just the tip of the brand iceberg that encompasses your whole company.

Accurately identifying them won’t magically fix the confusion around brand that is out there, but it sure won’t hurt and is a great place to start.

See you next week.

Michel Hogan is an independent Brand adviser and advocate. Through her work with Brandology here in Australia and in the United States she helps organisations make promises they can keep and keep the promises they make, with a strong sustainable brand as the result. She also publishes the Brand thought leadership blog – Brand Alignment. You can follow Michel on Twitter @michelhogan.