Hoover that google

With google now declared the word of the decade, tweet the word of the year and unfriend now officially in the OED, the English language is clearly still on the move.

When it comes to brand name eponyms some make it, some don’t. In the UK at least hoover is a familiar verb but here is one that did not make it into the lexicon in spite of serious efforts by the advertising industry.

So if we don’t use the verb “to Kodak”, it wasn’t for the lack of effort on the part of the company that created a brand familiarity for the 20^th century at least.

What’s interesting about these vintage ads is not just the effort to make turn Kodak into an eponymous verb, but the illustrations:

Children and technology taking pictures, setting up scenes and creating photographic stories with toys as props and companions as characters.

And the ad copy:  “There’s education in taking the pictures.”