Ask for It by Name!

It’s a good thing that Marcel Bich wasn’t fixated on his own name — otherwise one of the most famous advertising slogans of the 1970s would have been “Flick Your Bich.”

In 1945 Bich, having been production manager for a French ink manufacturer, bought a factory near Paris and began making parts for fountain pens and mechanical pencils. As a pen professional, Bich recognized that the ballpoint pen, then a novelty in postwar Europe, was the wave of the writing future, and by 1950, Bich and his partner Edouard Buffard were marketing their own ballpoints in Europe. But Bich realized that his own name might be hard for non-French buyers to pronounce correctly, so he shortened it to simply “BIC,” and within a few short years the world was inundated with inexpensive, stylish and wildly popular BIC pens. In 1973 BIC branched out into plastic butane lighters (making the slogan “Flick your BIC” a worldwide double entendre), and a few years later BIC pioneered the disposable plastic shaving razor. Today BIC markets a wide range of writing, shaving and office products as well as plastic sailboards.

The BIC logo, incidentally, features a character known as the BIC Boy, a schoolboy with the head of a ballpoint, designed in 1961 by legendary French graphic designer Raymond Savignac.

BIC isn’t the only family name associated with ballpoint pens. In the UK, ballpoints are commonly known as “Biros,” after Ladislas and Georg Biro, the Hungarian brothers who developed and marketed the first practical ballpoint pens during World War II.

Joyce C. Hall was born in August 1891 in the small town of David City, Nebraska. Joyce was a boy, and his unusual first name bears explaining. Joyce’s parents were deeply religious, and the lad happened to be born on the same day a Methodist bishop named Isaac W. Joyce paid David City a visit. (Bishops’ visits apparently being an unusual occurrence in rural Nebraska, Joyce’s brothers sported the more pedestrian names Ollie and William.)

When Joyce was 16, he and his brothers formed a company to sell postcards. The company didn’t exactly fail, but it didn’t really succeed either, and in 1910 Joyce dropped out of high school, packed all his postcards, and lit out for Kansas City. Within five years, Joyce and his brothers were back in business running a gift and card shop in Kansas City. In 1915, however, a fire destroyed the shop, and instead of reopening, the Hall brothers bought an engraving firm, which they opened for business under the logical name of Hall Brothers Company. The Halls were now in the business of creating, not just selling, greeting cards.

Hall Brothers’ business grew dramatically over the years, but Joyce Hall had never really liked the firm’s name, arguing that “It sounded old-fashioned,” and he pushed for changing their name to “Hallmark.” In 14th century London, members of the goldsmiths’ guild working at Goldsmiths Hall had adopted a special symbol, known as a “hall mark,” to be stamped into their products to denote quality and authenticity. In general usage since that time, “hallmark” had come to mean ”a mark placed or stamped on an article of trade to indicate its origin, purity, or genuineness.” Joyce felt the term was perfect because it stood for the high quality the firm valued and also incorporated the Hall family name.

In 1928, Joyce finally managed to convince his brothers and staff, and Hallmark Cards was born. Each card thereafter bore the legend “A Hallmark Card” on the back, along with the firm’s redesigned symbol of a five-pointed star. Joyce, it soon became apparent, had been right, and Hallmark Cards boomed. A few years later Hallmark became the first greeting card company to advertise on radio (and eventually TV), and with the addition of its signature slogan “When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best” in 1944, became one of the most recognized brands on earth. Not bad for a boy named Joyce.