I use the word Google all the time as a verb, like, “Just Google that to find out…” or “Have you Googled that company?” I suspect you do too. It’s like Google means any type of online search (though you’re most likely to use Google as 65.98% of us are doing.)

How great is this is you’re a marketer? Google is a company whose name has become a verb like Xerox. It’s a rare category. Some brands don’t become verbs but become more generic nouns for something. Kleenex, frisbee, coke (depending on where you live you might call it soda or pop too…but here in the south it’s all coke), and tylenol are examples of this. You say the words and everyone knows what you’re talking about. The bad thing about being a noun is that your name gets used but your product might not. The thing about being a verb, especially for Google, (not so much for Xerox these days I suspect) is that when you’re a verb you get the exposure and the product/service usage too.

I had the opportunity to have lunch yesterday with branding expert David Russell. David’s an advertising industry veteran who’s worked with some of the biggest names in the business. We were talking about new media verses traditional media and the new promotional outlets verses the old promotional outlets. One of those old promotional outlets we were talking about was newspapers. He had a great one liner that I had to share here…

“You’ll find newspaper readers every day in the obituaries.”

The point was, obviously, that if you’re still looking to newspapers (and many other traditional media) to reach your audience, you’re promoting through a declining medium. It’s declining in reach which means it’s declining in focus, impact, and effectiveness. David spoke of the old promotion paradigm where advertisers could place an ad on television or in newspapers and know it was reaching a large percentage of their target audience. David knows that world no longer exists and it was extremely interesting to talk with a guy who’s lived in the old advertising/marketing world but recognizes the new one filled with niche markets, new media, high interactivity, and narrowly focused promotional strategies. I believe he’s a rare exception to the rest of the industry which is in many way digging in and trying to push the old methods as if they are still as effective today as they used to be.

Additional note: David certainly didn’t ask me to do this but I feel compelled to mention that if you are looking for branding development or clarity, David is absolutely your guy. He has a method and perspective on branding that is both simple and profound and applies to just about every organization whether they realize it or not.