A bit of brand grist
As a naming strategy, I think I see what’s happening here. A Firefox and a Fire Eagle are counter intuitive in exactly the right proportions. These names resist comprehension but only just. They are counter intuitive, but not unintelligible. In the first moment of exposure, we don’t quite get them…and this prevents them from washing over us and out into that sea of forgettable branding and marketing. Comprehension is held up just long enough for the new name to lock into memory. As branding becomes more subtle, we will see more and more of this.
- via Grant McCracken, who writes a terrific blog on anthropology, economics and culture, and who’d probably be bemused by how the name actually originated
