Stetoscope

In “Using your personnal brand name to brand a products or a company” the personnal brand expert Dan Schawbel put a step toward a classic brand issue : “why some brands names come from imagination while some others come from the founder’s name”. Why General Electric is not called Thomedison’s company and why Morgan Stanley is not called “Investment General”(hihi).

Hasard, ego, legal, family reasons are all evocated by supposed experts. I do not believe them and I would like to share with you my own explanation.

In my opinion, the choice of a real name or a symbolic one is directly linked to the creation of value process of one’s company. It is a clear signal send to the market to where you think the value of one’s company is.

1. If the value is due to the incredible gift of an individual or a group individual, like an exceptional recipe, a workhouse that makes hand made cars or leather goods,… You call your company after his founders name. It is often the case in innovation, luxury, advocates, investment banks, advertising agencies… These are companies with strong “intuitu personae” as it is called in roman law, it means the contract is a person to person contract. You buy Chanel you sign a contract with Gabrielle Chanel, I mean her delegate Karl Lagarfeld.
2. Sometimes the value is rather due to the ability to deliver a standard, to be extremely reliable, to produce huge amounts of goods. That is what we call industry. The creation of value is first in the process than in the “genius” of a person. Those industries have a weak intuitu personae. When you buy a General Motors car, you sign a contract with a company.

So, as to me, it strongly depends on the intuitu personae of the company.

The case of Internet start-ups is really interesting then. Why google is not called “Pagrin”, Facebook “Zucker’s”, etc. It is because Internet start-ups are industries, very light industries but industries. To make a good Internet site with capacity you need a huge capital, you make a machine designed to be used by millions of people… That supposes several investors and a lot of consumers. So you do not sign a contract with the foundators but with an organisation.