The Brooklyn Brand: Who in Brooklyn Uses Brooklyn to Brand Services,Goods?

What's in a Name? Especially in Marketing and Especially When that Name is "Brooklyn?"

Plenty! As any brand manager will readily attest, a brand is something to be nurtured, developed and protected.

But what happens when a brand is a public entity, something that everyone can draw from but nobody can actually own? That's when things get interesting.

Since about the year 2000, Brooklyn has increasingly become a brand, no doubt about it. Brooklyn, New York, that is — because the name "Brooklyn" is used as a marketing hook for everything from pizza in Tallahassee to an Italian product, sold in some local shops, called Brooklyn Chewing Gum.

But the Brooklyn brand doesn't belong to just the newcomers, the locavores who make artisanal breads, beers, whiskeys and the like. Some "Brooklyn brands" have been around for over a hundred years (including the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, of course).

And, to make things slightly more complex, Brooklyn NY is not the only fish in the sea. There are about ten other Brooklyns in the US , and four other Brooklyns abroad.

Here's a very partial list of Brooklyn, NY businesses, non-profits, places and cultural institutions that use the word "Brooklyn" as the first word in their official name. (The list doesn't include walking advertisements for the borough, literally, the few dozen Brooklyn kids whose parents have named them, you've got it, "Brooklyn.")

Brooklyn is a Complex Idea

With Brooklyn's long history, and great diversity, the name Brooklyn belongs not just to a new generation of local entrepreneurs, but also to a great depth and breadth of local institutions, old and new, that put their first foot forward in public with the word "Brooklyn."

How does the whole get to be larger than the sum of its parts? What does the proliferation of Brooklyn branded businesses and non-profits mean for each one, and for the borough as a whole? We won't know till the great re-branding of Brooklyn has been around for a few more years. And for the moment, it's going gangbusters.

"Brooklyn" is a Branding Bonanza: Over 80 Businesses and Institutions in Brooklyn Have Names that Start with the Word "Brooklyn"

Brooklyn's a crowded brand, it would seem. Consider:

1. Brooklyn, the borough of NYC
2. Brooklyn Academy of Music - BAM
3. Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition - BARC
4. Brooklyn Arts Council - BAC
5. Brooklyn Bagels Cafe
6. Brooklyn Baptist Church
7. Brooklyn Battery Tunnel
8. Brooklyn Book Festival
9. Brooklyn Borough Hall
10. Brooklyn Botanic Garden
11. Brooklyn Bowl
12. Brooklyn Brew Shop
13. Brooklyn Brewery
14. Brooklyn Bridge
15. Brooklyn Bridge Marriott
16. Brooklyn Bridge Park
17. Brooklyn Brine
18. Brooklyn Center Cinema
19. Brooklyn Children's Museum
20. Brooklyn Circus
21. Brooklyn College
22. Brooklyn Community Boards
23. Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School
24. Brooklyn Conservatory of Music
25. Brooklyn Cruise Terminal
26. Brooklyn Cyclones
27. Brooklyn Dance Project
28. Brooklyn Eagle
29. Brooklyn Essentials
30. Brooklyn Family Theater
31. Brooklyn Fare
32. Brooklyn Federal Savings Bank
33. Brooklyn Fish Camp
34. Brooklyn Gin
35. Brooklyn Flea
36. Brooklyn For Peace
37. Brooklyn Free Speech TV
38. Brooklyn Friends School
39. Brooklyn General Store
40. Brooklyn Greenway Initiative
41. Brooklyn Heights (and all things associated with it)
42. Brooklyn Historical Society
43. Brooklyn Hospital
44. Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory
45. Brooklyn Independent Television
46. Brooklyn Inn
47. Brooklyn Jewish Children's Museum
48. Brooklyn Junction Retail Center
49. Brooklyn Kitchen
50. Brooklyn Law School
51. Brooklyn Leash
52. Brooklyn Legal Services
53. Brooklyn Library
54. Brooklyn Liquors
55. Brooklyn Lyceum
56. Brooklyn Museum
57. Brooklyn NAACP
58. Brooklyn Navy Yard
59. Brooklyn Nets
60. Brooklyn New School
61. Brooklyn Papers
62. Brooklyn Pharmacy and Soda Fountain
63. Brooklyn Philharmonic
64. Brooklyn Piano
65. Brooklyn Pita
66. Brooklyn Plumbing
67. Brooklyn Presbyterian Church
68. Brooklyn Pride
69. Brooklyn Public Library
70. Brooklyn Salsa
71. Brooklyn Soda Works
72. Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store
73. Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra
74. Brooklyn Tabernacle
75. Brooklyn Table Tennis Club
76. Brooklyn Tattoo
77. Brooklyn Tech High School
78. Brooklyn Terminal Market Assn
79. Brooklyn Tourism & Visitor Center
80. Brooklyn Underground Film Festival
81. Brooklyn Vodka
82. Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition
83. Brooklyn Wine Exchange
84. Brooklyn Winery
85. Brooklyn Women's Exchange
86. Brooklyn Youth Chorus
87. Brooklyner Apartments

Got others? Send 'em in!

About this List

The above list, updated in 2011, includes only entities 1) with names that start with "Brooklyn," and 2) which operate or exist in Brooklyn, NY.

What's not included:

• Omitted are others, such as the popular summer concert series, "Celebrate Brooklyn," where the word "Brooklyn" is not the first word in a name.
• Also omitted are odd spellings of Brooklyn, such as Breukelyn (the original Dutch), Brokelyn, BKLYN, Bkln, and BK.
• For sake of brevity, the list does not include a lot of the basic service firms, such as plumbing supply companies, car services and exterminators, that make life in a borough of 2.5 million people liveable, and whose company names start with "Brooklyn."
• Finally, the innumerable "Brooklyn"-named delis, pizzerias, shops and websites worldwide, and starting in Manhattan, are also not included.

For more on recent Brooklyn branding: Brooklyn: The Brand, a NY Times article from 2010.