Wii Makes A Splash
Posted on | April 29, 2006 at 9:36 am | 4 Comments
There’s something else I’ve been pondering lately. I wonder why oh why Nintendo decided to call their new next generation video-gaming system “Wii”. It’s pronounced, and is supposed to suggest, “We” or “Wheeeeee!”. But it makes me, and probably everyone else, think “Wee”, as in “pee” or “small”. Or “Oui” as in “yes”. You know a company made a great choice in a brand name when not only do they have to continually spell it for people, they also have to keep explaining it (as mentioned in this commentary). Some marketing company is laughing all the way to the bank on that one. (Anyone remember “Centrobe”?) Still, no matter what they call it, I predict people are going to buy it. Should make for some fun conversations though (I swear I wrote this before looking at any other blogs):
“Mom, can I go over to Tristan’s house and Wii?”
“No more Wii for you, young man, until you’ve finished your homework!”
“The disk is stuck in my Wii!”
“Hey, let’s go Wii!” “Go what now?” “Wii!” “We go where?” “We go Wii!”
My suggestion for a slogan, when they want to emphasize teamwork / multiplayer / online play:
“There’s no I in Wii”
That’ll confuse ‘em.
Latre.
Comments
4 Responses to “Wii Makes A Splash”
April 29th, 2006 @ 10:02 pm
Reminds me of three things: (1) the health care firm that decided billboards with its name in huge letters would be a good idea. Only problem is the name is chose was EMPHYSYS…whose first several letters are the same as “emphysema”… (2) A local weekly paper had the clever idea to call itself, simply, The Paper. What it didn’t count on is the problems this would create when spoken aloud: “Hi, I’m a reporter for The Paper.” “The paper? Which one?” “The Paper…” “Yes, I know – but which one?” and on and on into Abbott & Costello land. (3) A restaurant (which I will refer to here as “Dogbone”) cleverly listed its house burger configuration as “Our Dogbone Burger,” and also offered customers the option of making their own burgers, billed as “Your Dogbone Burger.” The pronoun problem, of course, proved endlessly annoying whenever someone tried to order it. “I’ll have, uh, ‘Your Dogbone Burger,’ by which I mean not ‘Our Dogbone Burger’ but the other one…”
You’d think people who are paid to come up with these things would actually think them through in terms of actual usage and the problems they might create…
April 30th, 2006 @ 12:11 pm
It does seem there is very little thought put into how the name is going to be used. But more power to Nintendo if they can leverage this and keep that buzz going. After awhile, when everyone knows what it is, it probably doesn’t matter how weird the name is. All publicity is good publicity.
May 9th, 2006 @ 5:03 am
You’re not the only one: http://images.chron.com/apps/comics/images/2006/5/9/Foxtrot.261.g.gif
May 9th, 2006 @ 7:00 am
Cool – nice formatting by WordPress on that comment…
Hey, I came up with the joke “first”!