Top brand names that go generic bad for business

A worker at Unilever’s OMO factory in Nairobi. The detergent is one of the products that had become generic in Africa due to its popularity. PHOTO | FILE 

By QUEEN MUNGUTI

In Summary

• Popular products risk losing their competitive edge as rivals cash in on buyer goodwill.

There are some products that achieve such universal prominence that their brand names become generic identity of similar goods.

The ubiquitous Sellotape is a classic example of such a brand that has become the generic name for pressure-sensitive tape.

But, often, the adoption of a brand as the generic name for a whole product range is a degree of success that ends up being too much for the good of the original product.

In her 2005 book, Brand Think — A Guide to Branding, marketer Lilian Wong observes that the consumer appeal that such universal brands have achieved transcends both culture and origin.

“An amazing thing about brands that become too popular is that, despite where they originate, they seem to be able to transcend borders and cultures to find a following where they go, in that they do not develop a new name, rather they are adopted into the country’s language to mean a particular product category.

“There is a common unspoken fundamental understanding among the brands that appeals across markets regardless of their culture or origin,” she said.

Such brands usually start to transit from normal brand strength by adopting a marketing tactic that their consumers relate to so strongly that the brand wins a huge market share and starts becoming a household name.

An example of this is Unilever’s detergent, OMO. In a bid to appeal to the bottom of the pyramid market in Africa, the company introduced a small package of its washing powder packaged in celluloid and bearing the OMO emblem.

It was such a success in the region that it led to OMO becoming the generic name for detergents in the continent.

“In Africa, the sachets became known among consumers as the ‘Blue OMO’ because of the blue colour of the detergent. Its introduction was a huge success in the continent. In fact, in many areas of the continent, OMO developed into a proprietary eponym to the point it became the generic name for all non-soap detergents,” said Professor of history of Southern Africa at the Institute of History, Leiden University, Jan-Bart Gewald and Iva Peša, a research historian focusing on frugal innovations in Africa in their book Transforming Innovations in Africa.

“So popular was the product that competitors made use of the phenomenon and introduced washing sachets under slightly different names such as OEM, using similar package designs and colours.”

It is this risk of losing brand identity that could harm profits, especially when new players enter the market. This has led some brands to encourage consumers to use other generic names, rather than their brand names, to refer to products in the category, so as to protect their brand name trademarks.

“Companies invest huge sums in new product development and building their brands. If a brand is spending £10 million on a single advert, the last thing they want is for people to be using its brand name as a verb to refer to the whole product category,” said Wendy Lomax, professor of brand marketing at Kingston University in an interview with UK newspaper, Independent in an article titled, ‘Genericide: When brands get too big’.

An example of a brand that turned to campaigns in a bid to persuade consumers to use a generic name instead of its brand name is Xerox. Consumers used its brand name Xerox to mean photocopy: so popular was it that it was included as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary.

However, despite the consumer appeal and market share that the name brought to the company, it sought to protect it, to prevent competitors from using it.

It said that the use of its brand name as a verb means there is a possibility it could be considered a generic word and no longer a protected trademark, thus competitors can use it to refer brands.

The company ran advertisements with one reading; ‘You cannot xerox a document, but you can copy it on a Xerox brand copying machine.’

- African Laughter