Brand Identity | Color Me Convinced

BusinessWeek has an intelligent story on the recent decision of Binney & Smith (a subsidiary of Hallmark) to rename itself after its most familiar brand — Crayola.  This is one of those rare cases where the experts all seem to agree — it’s a strong, confident move by a company on a roll.

Crayola is one of the world’s great invented brand names, in the same league as Kodak, Oreo, and Google. Edwin Binney’s wife, Alice, coined the term from the French word craie ‘chalk’ (the source of our word crayon) plus the affix -ola (a clipped form of the word oleaginous ‘oil-like’ — think Mazola).