Episode 21

When a company formulates a brand strategy, the trade name and trademark are at the heart of it.
A company's name is its trade name (Article 6, Paragraph 1 of the Companies Act).
A trademark is a character, figure, symbol, etc. that is used in connection with goods or services (Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the Trademark Act).
Building a valuable brand is not something that can be done overnight, but requires constant effort over a long period of time. Here are some examples that show the importance of trade names and trademarks in brand strategies.
・Case 1 (Trade name): Renown was once a major apparel company with the highest sales in Japan, but went bankrupt in 2020. Oggi International took over its main business and changed the company name to "Renown."
・Case 2 (Trademark): Japan Airlines' symbol mark is a crane and circle and has been used for a long time. In 2002, when the company merged with Japan Air System, it switched to a new design and temporarily disappeared. However, after the company went bankrupt in January 2010, Kazuo Inamori (Chairman of Kyocera), who was entrusted with restructuring the company, brought back the crane and circle with the intention of returning to the company's roots.
・Case 3 (Trademark): DUNLOP is a rubber and tire brand that originated in the UK. In Japan, Sumitomo Rubber Industries holds the trademark rights. Sumitomo Rubber Industries announced that it would acquire the DUNLOP trademark rights for four-wheel tires in Europe, North America, and Oceania from Goodyear for 526 million US dollars (82.6 billion yen). With the acquisition of this trademark right, Sumitomo Rubber Industries will be able to develop its tire business under the DUNLOP brand globally, except for some regions and products.
・Case 4 (Trademark): In Scotland, there is a single malt whiskey named after a distillery. Suntory's whiskey "Yamazaki" is the first domestically produced single malt whiskey made only from malt whiskey from the company's Yamazaki distillery. Because this name is a general surname, no trademark was applied for when it was first released. The application was filed in 1994, after the company had already built up a track record of sales. After a trial on the decision to reject the application, the trademark was granted registration in 1999 under Article 3, Paragraph 2 of the Trademark Law (acquisition of distinctiveness through use). It was important to register the product name bearing the distillery's name as a trademark in order to assert the individuality of single malt whisky and to establish a brand image.
In recent years, there have been cases where large, long-established companies have changed their names to new names consisting of just a few letters of the alphabet. In such cases, people may not know what the company is by looking at the new name, but may recognize the company by looking at the old one. Some of these companies have even aired extensive television commercials with their new names.
There is a famous book called "The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR" (co-authored by Al Ries and Laura Ries, 2002). In it, they point out that "the fundamental problem is the issue of credibility in advertising. No matter how creative the work is, no matter how appropriate the medium, advertising will run into the wall of a lack of credibility". They further point out that "as far as brand building is concerned, advertising has become obsolete. Now it is the information disseminated by the media that builds brands".