Stuck on Band-Aid Brand: Difference between revisions
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* Federal Express changed its name to FedEx, and even stated in the commercial that announced the change that it was because "that's what you call us anyway".
** If asked if a customer can "Mail" a package, FedEx and UPS will say that they don't "Mail", but you can "Ship" your package. You can only send "Mail" through the United States Postal Service, Canada Post, etc. (This is not really a branding issue; US and Canadian law prohibits anyone from competing with the Postal Service / Post Office to provide mail delivery, because otherwise the USPS / Canada Post would be out of business. FedEx and UPS have to pretend to be in the totally different business of express parcel delivery.)
* A postcode for a non-US address is never called a "ZIP code". As ZIP®, ZIP+4® and "Zone Improvement Program"® are former USPS trademarks, postal administrations in other countries used other, generic terms or regional variants. The trademarks are now defunct, but the generic "postal code" or "postcode" stuck. (Except in the Philippines)
* The word "cellophane" — or more precisely, the name "Du Pont Cellophane" — was also a trade-name. Genericized trademarks are the reason why every few years the Xerox Corporation will come out with ads reminding us that "There Are Two Rs in Xerox" (the second being, of course, the ®).
* Eastman-Kodak's efforts in the early part of the 20th century to popularize its product name, with such slogans as "Take a Kodak with you", were very nearly too successful: by the 1920s people were using "kodak", with no capital, as a synonym for "snapshot". (A character in Sinclair Lewis's 1937 novel ''It Can't Happen Here'' puts "a kodak album" in her suitcase.) The company had to move swiftly, with the advertising slogan "If it isn't an Eastman, it isn't a Kodak!"
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