Cute attempt, but Velcro/velcro has already been genericised for decades at this point. Nobody's going to move (back?) to "hook-and-loop," especially when the alternative rolls off the tongue a lot better.
> Nobody's going to move (back?) to "hook-and-loop," especially when the alternative rolls off the tongue a lot better.
Cynically, I wonder if they intentionally chose an alternative that they know is a dud. They clearly do benefit from people calling it Velcro, they just can’t have a trademark judge thinking that they want people to call it Velcro.
In any case, the video is quite fun and well done. If you take it as a marketing campaign without putting too much weight on the legal strategy, it’s smart and well-executed on their part.
That may not matter to Velcro (TM). As long as they're publicly making attempts to defend their trademark, perhaps that is enough for them to keep legal rights to it.
Surely you know from reading the article that it's actually "Velcro® Brand". It's easier to follow than most telenovelas. We get it, hook and loop isn’t in our everyday vocabulary, but calling it Velcro (TM) just wouldn’t be true.
> Nobody's going to move (back?) to "hook-and-loop," […]
I do, depending on the audience — I'm fine with hook-and-loop. In general I try to avoid generic trademarks whenever reasonable. In English this takes more effort; in Dutch this isn't too much of an issue. No native Dutch speaker would consider calling an 'ijsdweilmachine' a 'zamboni', for example. It seems that this is very much a US English thing to do.
"Hook-and-loop" is a crappy name for it in English because it conveys an image of someone physically performing a hooking and looping action, like the old-timey hobby, latch hooking[0]. But the action you perform is really just either pressing together or pulling apart. The fact that the mechanism is comprised of tiny hooks and loops isn't really germane to how it works on a macro level. I quite like the "fur tape" mock suggestion in the second video.
Yeah. If someone was to say their clothes had hook-and-loop fastener, I would never think of velcro. I would think of the metal hooks and loops (or eyes) on bra straps, old jackets, dress pants, etc.
Nah, it happens in Dutch too. Aspirine for example is commonly used for the generic medicine, even though it's a brand name. (Hell, it's sometimes even used as a general term for a light over-the-counter pain killer like paracetamol.)
TomTom is also sometimes used for general navigation systems, though that has been going downhill as fast as the company.
"Googlen" is used too in the general sense. Google does have a huge market share, so it's usually correct, but people do "google on Bing".
Cynically, I wonder if they intentionally chose an alternative that they know is a dud. They clearly do benefit from people calling it Velcro, they just can’t have a trademark judge thinking that they want people to call it Velcro.
In any case, the video is quite fun and well done. If you take it as a marketing campaign without putting too much weight on the legal strategy, it’s smart and well-executed on their part.