The last time I was in the property fixup business, my favorite local store was Home Depot. My kids even christened it “Daddy’s Toy Store” because I was there almost every weekend loading up lumber and paint and whatever. At one stage they even gave me my own contractor’s card! Now that is a real customer reward card.
But now my neighbors and friends kept telling my about Lowe’s®. Except of course they told me verbally so I would go to my computer and type in Loews and wonder what financial rabbit hole I had fallen down.
After 3 months I have finally figured out which is which and can say that I know Loews as the high end hotel chain (or financial institution), and my new toy store is Lowe’s – and how impressive it is I can’t start to believe. So big, so helpful, yet I can go online and they ship in a day or two up to me in the foothills, or have product brought in to their store specifically for me. Even better still, when I urgently needed some new windows to meet new fire codes for a rental property, I could look online late at night and see how many they had in stock and even where in the giant store to find them. Wow. That is real branding for you, because as I have often said, A Brand Is a Promise of Service.
But who is this other behemoth with the phonetically equivalent name and trademark? Of course, Loews and Lowe’s can both exist as registered trademarks because they are in different international trademark categories. But what about Loews Corp® and Loews Hotels®? There logos are not the same, though there does seem to be some similarity.
The answer here is simple. Loews Hotels is a subsidiary of Loews Corp so they can do whatever they think is right for their different divisions.
And finally, since all these names are originally family names, there is no literal meaning to them and no connection to anything high and low. Except they have come to be great strong brands for big companies in different fields.
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