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January 27th, 2:36pm 1 comment

iPad and Dangerous Branding

Admittedly, Jane Wells of CNBC tweets "forget my pathetic attempts at cleverness" as she points you to her post entitled 'Ummm ... the iPad?'

Apparently, the Apple folks did not consider the word 'pad' as "it conjures up visions of, well, you know, woman-y thingies."

Considering 'iTampon' is at the top of Twitter Trends as I pen this blog post, Jane may be right in her premonition, "Prepare for the jokes, folks."

I guess the people who breathe office supplies, or web browsers when they came up with 'tabs' as well as the folks at NASA with their launch 'pads' (or IBM's ThinkPad) must all be men or include some women with a keen sense of humor.

Why the jokes then? Could it possibly be for some that they are Apple bashers who were looking to find something amiss with the product and picked on its name instead ... when clearly the product needs at least two more revisions to include some of the necessities it's still missing? Like a camera or cameras, or a phone, or television connection, or even multitasking capabilities. But at $499 at its lowest price point, it will still kindly (no pun intended) kill the Kindle. Heck, it might even kill Apple's own MacBook Air.

By the way, Apple and AT&T have teamed up to sell you a month-to-month data plan for the iPad. Like someone jokingly suggested, you'll know when to pay as it will be that time of the month. Unless of course you're beyond menopause. By the way, did you all come to a pause as you noticed the word 'men' hidden cleverly in menopause.

Bottom line: If you're among the branding geniuses, consider your 'brand' name wisely. Consult politicians who know a thing or two about negative ads, and correspondents who'll write funny things about you, and jokesters who'll have fun at your 'brand-new' brand name.

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Posted 7 months ago

Comments (1)

Jan 27, 2010
Metin said...
From CNN: Andy Ihnatko, a tech columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, said Apple could call its new gadget a "mangled baby duck" and people would still buy it, both because Apple has sex appeal and because the iPad is a good product.

Also from CNN: After Apple unveiled the iPad at an invitation-only event, some tech journalists said they thought the jokes about feminine hygiene would dissipate soon.

The name "iPod" sounded strange at first, for example, and now is a part of the standard vocabulary, said Hutcheon (Stephen Hutcheon, an editor at The Sydney Morning Herald).

"If you think of iPods in 2001, we probably got the same smirks," he said. "I think the jokes will disappear."

He added that one could take "pad" to mean "home," which is where Apple CEO Steve Jobs hopes many people will use the iPad to read books, watch movies and the like.

via CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/27/apple.ipad.reaction/index.html

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