You wear your Nike shoes to Gap when you visit the mall. On the way, you stop at Starbucks to get a latte. Brands are an integral part of our daily lives. What does this really mean?
Caleb Davis Bradham, Pepsi’s inventor, originally wanted to become a doctor. However, a family crisis forced him to abandon medical school and instead become a pharmacist, according to the company website.
Bradham’s original invention, “Brad’s Drink,” was made from sugar, water and caramel. It also contained lemon oil, lemon oil, nutmeg, and some lemon oil. Bradham changed the name to Pepsi-Cola three years later. He believed it would aid digestion.
Panera’s Facebook page states that the sandwich chain’s name is derived from Latin and Spanish roots.
Stanford University brainstormed the name of the company. Business Insider reported that Larry Page, the founder, was searching for ideas to create a large index data website together with other graduate students.
One suggestion was “googolplex”, one of the most evocative numbers. This name emphasizes how much information can be found through the search engine. After a student accidentally mispelled the word, Page registered his company under that name.
Raymond Kroc, founder of McDonald’s was a smoothie machine seller when he met Dick and Mac McDonald who owned a San Bernardino hamburger restaurant.
McDonald’s brothers purchased several Multimixers from them and were so impressed by their hamburger restaurant, he became their agent. He also created franchises across the United States. He bought the rights to McDonald’s’ name several years later.
You are mistaken if you thought Adidas meant “All Day I Dream About Soccer”. According to the LA Times, the sportswear brand is named after Adolf Dassler who, upon his return from WWI began making athletic shoes. It combines Adi Dassler’s nickname and the first three letters in her last name.
Forbes reports that Crew was named to compete with Polo Ralph Lauren’s line. Arturo Cinader, the founder of Polo Ralph Lauren, added the J to give it some cachet.
Hans Wilsdorf was the founder of Rolex. He wanted a brand that could speak any language according to Business Insider.
Wilsdorf says, “I tried to combine letters of the alphabet into every possible way.” This gave me a hundred names but none of them sounded right. As I was sitting on the top deck in a horse-drawn bus, along the Cheapside in London one morning, a genius whispered “Rolex” in my ear.
Chip Wilson, founder of Lululemon, came up with the name “Yoga Clothing Brand” because he thought it was difficult to pronounce in Japan. He wrote:
“It was assumed that a Japanese marketing company wouldn’t try to create an American sound-brand with the letter L, as that sound is not found in Japanese phonetics. We thought the Japanese consumer would be able to recognize the name as authentic and American by including the letter ‘L’ in its name. The name lululemon has no origin or meaning, it simply has three ‘Ls’ in a single word. There is nothing more than that.
Lululemon representatives told Business Insider that the brand name was selected from a list 20 brands and 20 logos. This was done by a 100-strong group.
Zara’s founder, Amancio Ortega, was inspired by the 1964 film “Zorba The Greek”, to name his company. This was not to last.
According to The New York Times, the first store opened in La Coruna in 1975. It was located two blocks away from Zorba’s bar. Ortega had already created the molds for the letters on his sign before the bar owner told Ortega that it was too confusing that they shared the same name.
Ortega ended up changing the arrangement of the letters to create the closest word that he could, hence Zara.
AsSeenOnScreen, a British online retailer, was established in 1999. It was located on the website asseenonscreen.com. ASOS – pronounced EISOSS – gained rapid popularity, and the website was shortened into asos.com.
IKEA isn’t a Swedish term you don’t know. Ingvar Kamprad, the founder, chose the brand by combing the initials of his name, IK with the first letters from the farm and the place where he grew-up in southern Sweden: Elmtaryd, and Agunnaryd.
Gordon Bowker, co-founder of Starbucks, shared the story about how the name came to be. They started by looking through words beginning with “st”, thinking they could make a more loud sound.
He said, “Someone thought of an old mining map for the Cascades or Mount Rainier and there was an ancient mining town called Starbo.” “I saw Starbo immediately and my mind was instantly taken to Melville’s first mate [whose nickname was Starbuck] in Moby-Dick.”
Soylent, a Silicon Valley favorite and a drink that is a fan of Silicon Valley, got its name from the sci fi novel “Make Room!” Make Room! It discusses how the increase in population is threatening the planet’s natural resources. Soylent is a blend of soybeans, lentils, and other ingredients.
In 1969, the first Gap store was opened with the aim of selling quality jeans. This name refers to the generation gap between children and adults.
Two things are meant by the name of the supermarket chain: 1. It’s the name of the Pennsylvania region where the first dairy farm was established. 2. It is a Native American term that refers to a Canadian goose (the one featured in the company logo).
According to a Tablet Magazine interview, Reuben Mattus, a Polish Jewish immigrant, named his ice-cream company Haagen-Dazs to pay tribute Denmark. The name itself doesn’t mean much.
Mattus stated that Denmark was the only country to have saved the Jews in WWII. Mattus registered the company with a completely fictitious Danish address. “Haagen Dazs doesn’t mean anything. It would draw attention, especially with the umlaut.
Nike is the Greek goddess for victory
Gatorade was created for the Florida Gators
This sports drink was developed by a team of University of Florida doctors for Florida Gators soccer players who had difficulty playing in the heat.
Andrew Kortina is the founder of digital payments app.
“When brainstorming began, we came up with the Latin verb, I Sell / Sell, which was one of our options. We liked the word “Venmo” because it was short and could be used as a verb. “Venmo only for dinner.”
According to Kevin Plank, Washington Post CEO, Under Armor’s name was accidentally created. Plank stated that he thought of the name Body Armor but could not register it as a trademark.
I was disappointed, but I had planned to meet my older brother Bill for lunch. So I drove to get him, knocked on his door and he looked at my younger brother like an older brother. Under. Armor?
How did the U get to Under Armor? Plank explains:
“The reason why we added the U’ to Armor was because I was skeptical that this whole internet thing would work back then. I found the 888-4ARMOR number to be much more appealing than the 888-44ARMOR. It was so simple that I wish there had been more marketing research or science behind it.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, had a completely different vision for his brand when it first launched in 1995.
According to Brad Stone’s book about the company, Bezos wanted his online bookstore to be called Cadabra. Todd Tarbert, Amazon’s first lawyer, convinced him that the name sounded too similar to “Corpse.”
It is also said that Bezos loved the name Relentless (Relentless). If you visit Relentless.com currently, you will be redirected directly to Amazon.
Bezos settled on Amazon as the name for the largest river in the world and included an image of the river in the company’s initial logo.
John F. Queeny founded the Monsanto Agrochemical Company in 1901. His business was named after Olga Monsanto Queeny, his wife.
Verizon was created from a merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, two telecommunications companies. The name Verizon is a combination of the Latin word “veritas”, which means “truth”, as well as the English “horizon” (horizon), which signifies that the brand is looking towards the future.
It is almost as if James Cash (Money Penney) was named after the founder of the store.
