• Brandweek, Tuesday, June 15, 2010 10:46 AM

CoreBrand founder and CEO James R. Gregory asks the question: How can you build brand equity as strong and durable as that enjoyed by such venerable names as Paine Webber, AlliedSignal or Handi Wrap? Answer: The old fashioned way. Buy it.

"Instead of investing significant amounts of one's budget in building a new brand name, entrepreneurs would do well to consider exploiting the existing brand equity that resides in names we, as consumers, once favored and still remember fondly," he writes. And a surprising number of orphan brands are up for sale, he reports, at a fraction of the cost, time and legal headache of creating a new name.

Admittedly, there are a few famous brand names you may want to avoid. Enron, for example, unquestionably has tremendous name recognition, but for all the wrong reasons.

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