http://bit.ly/U5HBy or more usefully - 'It's vegemite but it's different' http://www.vegemite.com.au/vegemite/page?siteid=vegemite-prd&locale=auen1&PagecRef=758
Yes '27-year-old father-of-two from Western Australia Web designer Dean Robbins has coined the name for the new Vegemite, with his winning entry chosen from a field of almost 35,074 submissions'. The other 35,073 submissions must have barked and howled badly (although there were only 16,071 unique names). And why not entrust branding and naming of products to anyone? It's easy isn't it. I mean writing is easy - we can all use a keyboard. Logos are easy - we can all draw pictures. And after all - we're all experts in politics and business as we can listen to Radio Live or TV news. Even though we're all experts and qualified to design brands and names I suspect Dean saw lots of fun in the design and thats how he came up with it.
There are three clusters of reasons I think it's dumb. In reverse order of significance
1) Brand identity and Brands dependent on other brands
Apart from using 'i' being brand theft, let's assume Apple let it go on the grounds they're not in the revolting spreads market. You can't have your product dependent on the whim and fortunes of another brand. While it is unlikely Apple may do something dumb, pollute all of a province of China, be bankrupted in an IP case, whatever.
And here's the thing - what are they saying? That this is a snack with Wifi? That this is a snack for people who own an iPhone? Does this spread come off your Mp3 player easily? We've mixed silicon chips through it? Probably that this is the spread for cool young people. Have they got a budget to place it in that market? Is it part of a brand strategy or just a folly? And so are they now gonna rebrand the wrapper to look 'cool and sweet for yuff'?
2) Spoken brand
How do you say it? Eye snack two point one will never work. So it will be i snack OR worse vegemitesnack or ivege (or 'cream vegemite') 2.0 is just not gonna survive Don, Doreen, Jayden and Allysa's breakfast time. (Just give me coffee and pass the cream vegemite stuff!)
People will never write it correctly - not so important in an age where people don't write anymore but I can imagine dairy owners misspelling it badly as it has a '.', a capital in a strange place, and snack is as easily misspelt as potato. [hint: there is no e in potato or tomato UNLESS pluralised].
3) Longevity
Ten years ago when I led changing the physical branding for the Christchurch City Council we were presented with one option which was a graphic presentation of www.ccc.govt.nz rather than saying Christchurch City Council. The designers said that this would show we were modern and up-to-the-minute. (They also had a well-meaning promotion campaign in their pocket that was effectively 'Hey we have a website!'). While almost all companies had websites then the other main reason we rejected it was because it sounded and looked very nice and futuristic at the time, and that meant it would date quickly.
iSnack2.0 looks like a temporary product. That may be the strategy but if it did for some weird reason take-off (perhaps lots of people getting depressed and seeing it as a low-level self harming masochistic thing) the name will need to be rebranded very quickly - probably to VSnack or, if Apple don't make it hard, iSnack.
I really don't like competitions in the brand, design and naming area. Yes they build popular support, but no they don't hit the mark for the strategies you should be following. Also, in the case of - 'draw us a logo' you end up with things you can't use any of, creating a disappointment or rejection of customer participation.Why do I care? I take brand strategy far too seriously. Understanding what products, services and organisations do of value to their communities, customers and stakeholders is one of the things I do. Really though I hate seeing a job in this area done badly. If we leave it to amateurs we all look like amateurs.
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