In recent months I’ve become very interested in all things branding. It takes blood, sweat, and tears to build a brand’s reputation and even more to maintain it. I’ve recently noticed the amount of people who choose to use popular brand names synonymously with the common nouns or verbs. For example  Kleenex: tissue. Google: look up. Levi’s: blue jeans. Dockers: khaki’s. Now, I’m saving the legality and pros and cons on this for a later post, but what I want to know is what happens when a brand’s name is used negatively, like Crisco. Continue reading →