Why There is an I in Most Products & Brands Names These Days?

Whenever I surf internet for some cool products I find most of the unique products with “I” in their names like “iWatchz”(a brand), “I’m watch”(a smart watch) , “I’m here” (GPS Gadget), “I’m cloud” (cloud service), “ibike” (a bike), “ibike” (a power meter), i8 and i3 (BMW cars), icartaxi (a taxi service), iGun (a weapon), Core i3, so  on and so forth these are just few I pointed out among dozens.

And don’t forget the Apple number of products that begin with “I”, now clearly there is something special about this “I” that’s why even BMW using it in their auto brands, so what is it. In the beginning it was Apple that used “I” (for the first time) in their desktop computers “iMac” and now they are using the same alphabet in number of products. But why, Apple doesn’t talk about it much, so I thought I should dig and find out why is it so special, why is everyone using it in their products.

I have found some key reasons that I believe are the prime reasons for having “I” in your product/service names these days.

Reasons for “I” in your brand

• Unique

Like I said first it was Apple, just think about it how unique it is, there is Galaxy S series, Sony Xperia, Nokia Lumia and then there is iPhone. Yeah iPhone, every brand is trying to differentiate their products by different names but they are all somewhat similar except for iPhone.

Simply because there is nothing as unique as “I” in all these products, this alphabet represent individuality, ownership, uniqueness (as every individual is unique) plus it is just one alphabet while all others represents different things like Galaxy S where galaxy represents a system of stars and S represents a specific star.

That’s my guess and it is possible that others would say it stands for Singapore (where it was launched), singtel, Smartphone, series. Lumia means light, Xperia could be a reference to famous XP operating system, or it is just a coined word representing “experience”.

“Lumia” relates to “Galaxy S” while “Xperia” possibly relates to “I” but still the dominant part is that of “I”. Now it comes down to “I” vs “Xperia” well to me “I” wins as it is just one alphabet, very familiar, represents individuality, ownership, uniqueness while “Xperia” is combination of words, ambiguous, relatively less unique.

• Because it is part of a leading brand

Yeah, just think about it, Apple brand value according to Brandz in 2013 is $185.071 billion of which iPhone brand value is $48.45 billion. This is a really big brand and anybody with little common sense would try to associate its product with it, to leverage their brands/products.

Now the only difference comes from “I” and without it a phone is just a phone, a bike is just a bike, a car just a car but when you add “I” to it you add value to it. Because you are then giving people something to think about, to check out. Plus Apple can’t sue you for using “I” but it does make difference, rather a huge difference.

• Neutral

When you have a neutral name for a product/brand like “iPhone” it would appeal to everyone, everyone would have their own interpretation of the name, some would find it cool and unique and others would see it as personal, exclusive, innovative so on and so forth.

The alphabet “I” represents neutrality (it can be used by both genders) and adding it to a product means adding unlimited interpretations as some conspiracy theorist believe “I” stand for “illuminati” or one “eye”. See how diverse its interpretations are, that’s the benefit of a neutral name.

• Memorable

It happens to all of us we forget (“Presque vu” a type of Deja experience) a famous actor name, a movie name etc though we know it is right there but for some time we are unable to retrieve it. This is very possible to happen in case of names like Xperia, Lumia and probably Galaxy S series, but it is very unlikely in case of “iPhone” because nobody forgets something as common as “phone” and “I” so yeah it is memorable.

You don’t need somebody to remind you about it. That means it is quite beneficial from marketing perspective too. No need for huge budgets to anchor the brand/product name through marketing, promotion mix, just do it once well enough and world will remember it forever.

So these are the few reasons I believe why everyone is using “I” as brand/product name, now it’s your turn to share your thoughts, plus you can also read about Apple product strategy ;).