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“JEEP” means WILLYS Ads

• CATEGORIES: Advertising & Brochures, Features This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

Paul forwarded this.  I have a variety of brochures & Ads, but not this one.  The slogan “JEEP” means WILLYS is an interesting intellectual property strategy.  Just another way to intertwine the two meanings.

 

2 Comments on ““JEEP” means WILLYS Ads

  1. Leo

    Yes they did that a lot the early years after the war, the ‘Jeep’ name was not a registered trademark in their name yet, so they couldn’t call it Jeep without the quotation marks.
    company lawyers were battling it out about who had the right to call their car a Jeep.
    I believe it wasn’t properly registered until ’51 (to Henry Kaiser, who bought Willy’s Overland) but correct me if i’m wrong.

  2. deilers

    Leo,

    That’s very true. What confuses me is how they managed to get a trademark at all on the name (the grille yes, but the name no). One of my arguments in the appendix of my book is that examples like this suggest the name jeep had become a noun by the end of the war, thanks in part to Willys advertising itself and, thus, its adjectival description of a 4×4 was damaged. It is exactly the reason the folks that manufacture the Zamboni Ice Resurfacer request that people/media do not refer to them as “Zambonis”.

    But that’s just my opinion 🙂

    – Dave

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