“In my opinion, lack of distinctiveness is the biggest mistake,” says Hando Sinisalu, the owner of SÜDI, our newly selected trade mark of the month. With his long experience in event marketing, he observes today’s business event landscape, where similar and descriptive names blend into a uniform mass. According to Sinisalu, in the era of Google and ChatGPT searches, a clearly distinctive trade mark is strong currency.
SÜDI (meaning brave, bold, courageous, spirited in Estonian), which stands for the small business conference, is a good example of such a mark. The name, created jointly by Sinisalu’s family, is pleasantly surprising and triggers unexpected associations and emotions in the consumer – a quality that guides consumer purchasing decisions in a favourable direction for the entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur also warns that a strong brand carries the risk of malicious copying or even theft: “In hindsight, I should have registered the trade mark right from the start. There is always the risk that if the business takes off, someone else might register the name. I waited three years, but luckily nothing bad happened!”