Saturday, August 13, 2011

Question 749: When I Come Around

The company was six months from insolvency, and morale was at an all-time low. There were warring factions and fiefdoms pitting any number of internal groups against each other, with each assigning blame for the company’s slow demise. The returning (temporarily) interim CEO began cutting irrelevant products, projects and partnerships to streamline the company to a spartan group of products.

He selected a project that was an extension of the very first product the company released. It was in a very infant stage and it would wind up barely resembling what was originally envisioned. The vision was a radical design, a departure from just about anything else in the market.

There was no name for this product and the CEO felt that it would be extremely important to have a relatable name, something that didn't deviate from their original methodology, but pushed through their revolutionarily new TBWA\Chiat\Day-designed ad campaign.

After much back-and-forth between the visionary CEO and the creative branding genius, the new name __X__ for the product reverberated so much within the company and then out to the industry and the consumer world, that it has defined and stuck with every new product introduced by the company since then. It has represented the ease of access to the internet, the interestingly refreshing design methodologies used to create new niche markets and has become a techno-cultural platitude (almost).

What is this name, __X__ ?