Fast Company tapped our team to evaluate Dell’s new brand architecture and names for its computers. Here’s a taste, or read the full story.
There are surely many reasons that the parents of tech icon Michael Dell did not name him Inspiron or XPS. For one, Dell’s parents aren’t Elon Musk. More generally, there is appeal to a commonplace name. Yes, you sacrifice originality. You risk being called a copycat by your cousin. But in return you get benefits like clarity and simplicity.
This is why it makes sense that Dell’s eponymous company just announced an overhaul of the naming schema for its computers, replacing fairly distinctive brands (Inspiron, XPS, Latitude, Precision, OptiPlex) with branding architecture that has all the sparkling originality of a tape measure. The old names, hailing back to the ’90s, will be phased out. In their place will be three more intuitive options: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.
If you’ve got a nagging feeling this seems familiar, it may be because Apple has long used this tack (iPhone, iPhone Pro, iPhone Pro Max, etc.). But while Dell’s move is derivative, adopting this language also leverages the fact that others have already trained consumers to understand what these descriptors mean. If there’s already a Big Mac, one hardly needs to explain what a Big King is. If there’s already a Disney+, everyone is well broken-in for Paramount+. …
