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AQUADA CASE STUDY
SUMMARY
Sector: Automotive / Transport
Brand type: Product
Primary Client: Gibbs Technologies
Secondary Client: Heavenly
Trademark territories: Prior to full process implementation
Trademark classes: Prior to full process implementation
Geographies: Prior to full process implementation
Languages: 6 languages
Validation types: Localized Language, International Language
International Standards Implemented:
Prior to ISO implementation
BACKGROUND
Early in 2003, John Rhys, Heavenly’s big name brand industry specialist and founder, was in search of a quick turnaround for his ground-breaking marine automobile naming project on behalf of Gibbs Technologies. The name was to be exciting, dynamic, innovative and also have paneuropean reach.
PROJECT
The appeal to the final choice name lay in part with its fast, rotating, rhythmic, three-syllable and a vowel rhyming patterning AQUADA but also, significantly, to its multi-lingual aspect where Latin aqua ‘water’ was joined to Italianate -ada from autostrada ‘motorway’.
Aqua is recognisable today through Spanish agua, Italian acqua and several paneuropean words such as the ‘blue-green colour’ aquamarine and the painting stye aquarelle and so has great international resonance and portability.
Richard Branson’s channel record breaking trip from the English coast to Calais in a Gibbs Aquada on June 14th 2004 incredibly cut four hours off the previous record and unsurprisingly sealed the name in the annals of British transport history.
