Brands...

Some companies come to be associated with their products to such an extent that after a while, people tend to refer to the product by the company name. This is great for publicity, but it has its own preils :-)

Xerox is a classic example. Just recall the number of times you've heard the phrase "Xerox it". Does it mean to say Xerox is the only company manufacturing photocopiers? Certainly not! We have Canon, Nashua, Ricoh and many others.

Imagine your neighbourhood photocopier store has a non-Xerox machine thats always under repair. What would the people say? "Xerox is not working" "Xerox is under repair" "That Xerox machine is always having one or the other problem". Poor Xerox. Thats the price you pay for being a pioneer.

Similarly, if you speak to someone who works for a certain three lettered company, he'd say he uses a TP, not a laptop or a notebook ;-)

But one company that I think hasn't gotten its due for the innovations they've done is 3M. From "Post-it", "Scotch Brite", to anti-glare computer screens, cord retractors, to name a few. Of course, people associate the sticky piece of paper as Post-it even though other companies now manufacture it (Kores for instance), but you'll never hear anyone say 3M-Post-it.

While in the US, its not uncommon to hear people ask you to "FedEx" or "UPS" them a package.

There surely are many other such associations out there. Anyone?