Modern Idea

Last week Google made a subtle change that may signal a big shift in their branding. The change was to a simple 16 pixel-wide icon that appears in the address bar.

Can Google Own the Letter “g”? Are they trying to? According to Search Engine Land, the change is meant to represent a “simple, playful and unique brand.” Google wouldn’t admit they are set on owning a single letter, even if that is exactly what they are attempting to do. So let’s look into what it would take for them to do so.

Conventional wisdom states that the shorter the name the better—so long that it is memorable. G-O-O-G-L-E… Is six letters too much? Not likely, but Google likes to dominate, so why not own the letter “g”? This is no small task, even for the the fastest growing company of all time.

There are too many companies to list who have successfully owned three letters. On the flip side, there are only a select few who have been able to own just two characters, and as far as I can tell, only one that owns a single letter.

Here are a few groups of two characters companies that you should be able to identify:

• GE
• 3M
• HP
• GM

Now wait a minute… When you saw GM did you think of General Mills? Probably not, but a mother of three kids probably does. So does General Motors or General Mills own “GM”? I’d argue that neither does due to contamination from the other. It is clearly difficult for a company to own a two character combination. Here’s a few companies that have attempted to do so with some success:

• AA (American Airlines)
• GE (General Electric)
• XM (XM Satellite Radio)
• EA (Electronic Arts)
• 3M
• RL (Ralph Lauren)
• HP (Hewlett Packard)
• GM (General Motors yet some may argue General Mills)
• LG
• VW (Volkswagen)
• GQ (Gentleman’s Quarterly)

Only LG and 3M have their offical names being just two characters. If we widen the selection criteria, the characters “U” and “2″ come together nicely to form one of the greatest bands of all time.

Throw in a non-alphanumeric character and this exercise gets a bit easier:

• P&G (Procter & Gamble)
• J&J (Johnson & Johnson)
• D&G (Dolce & Gabbana)

Now, enter Yahoo, or should I say Y! (read: “why bang”)

Yahoo has actively marketed the Y! for quite some time. I would argue with a great deal of success. Remember, many people think they “google” right from Yahoo’s search box. That’s changing of course, but the brand cache of Yahoo is solid. Google’s name recognition in the Internet space is second to none (for their core search product), however they haven’t done the best job of creating a clear brand message. Is this changing? Has Google set out to own the letter ‘g’? If so, it could be a bout of the Y! me-toosies? (note to self: stop watching Scrubs!) Ok, I just wanted to say me-toosies and give a shout out to one of my fav shows!

That brings us to the one company (organization) that has successfully owned a single character. Every man and woman in America has set foot in a YMCA at one point in their life. Do we say: “I’m going to the Y-M-C-A?” No, we simply say the “Y”.

Have I missed a single letter that is known as a company or organization namesake? Tell me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.