Apple’s announcement of its long-awaited tablet computer yesterday was greeted by a round of quips about the name. iPad? Within minutes, the top trending topics on Twitter included "iTampon" and "iMaxiPad." Was this a blunder by this most revered of marketers? Naming gurus are split. Phillip Davis, president of Tungsten Branding, thinks Apple stumbled. "I think they’ve created some challenges for themselves," he tells BrandFreak. "If you’re trying to create a new category, it’s really important that you create a name that’s proprietary. iPad doesn’t do that." Fair enough, but what about the iPhone, which was similarly generic? "The product rose to the occasion," says Davis. "This one was on the bubble and really needed some help." But Hayes Roth, CMO for Landor Associates, says iPad is a great name. "It’s a very smart name," says Roth, adding that the tampon connotation hadn’t occurred to him. Roth says Apple owns the "i" prefix and that walking away from that nomenclature wouldn’t make much sense. So, how about the iSlate then? "To me, that has concerns," says Roth. "It’s a cold, cold stone, and it also takes you back to Romans chiseling into stones." A pad, by contrast, has more modern, mobile connotations, Roth says. Meanwhile, Danny Altman, CEO of A Hundred Monkeys, took the surprising view that the name doesn’t really matter. "Apple has been brilliant about focusing on the only brand that matters—the big one," he says. "It has a long history of making great products with undistinguished names."
—Posted by Todd Wasserman