Amazon started in 1995 with the tagline “Earth’s biggest bookstore,”, but they quickly outgrew that and shifted to “Earth’s biggest selection.” More recently, their tagline was “And you’re done,” but it seems like they are no longer promoting that one either. So, I’d like to submit a new tagline for their consideration: “Burn baby burn.” Why? Because they are pyromaniacs. It’s official now. It started with the Kindle, followed by the Kindle Fire, then the Kindle MatchBook service. Earlier this year, they launched Fire TV and yesterday they announced the launch of their first smartphone, the Fire Phone.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the name Fire Phone. I’m a sucker for alliteration and I have a lot of respect for marketers that stick with a theme and support their brands long-term. When you’re in a company, it’s easy to be tempted to change your logo, launch a new brand, launch meaningless new products, change your tagline . . . you get my drift. It’s the savvy marketer who remembers that although they are staring at their brand logo/name/tagline/etc all day, their consumer is not. Their consumer is being bombarded by hundreds (if not thousands) of brands, ads, logos, products, promotions, slogans, tweets, and emails. The brands with the most consistent and clearly articulated positioning win. That’s why I’m a fan of Amazon’s relentless fury of fiery naming convention.
Back to the Fire Phone. Some cool features of the new phone include:
– 3D display – Amazon has named the technology Dynamic Perspective
– Tilt to scroll – Does what it says
– Firefly (what did I tell you about the pyromania?) – At first I thought this was simply a barcode-scanner app, but it does a whole lot more:
- It can identify and tag songs, films, and TV shows
- It can scan text and phone numbers printed on paper
- It doesn’t need a barcode to identify a product; it can identify 100 million items just by pointing the camera at the object
- Then, once it has identified the product, it can provide price comparisons and order straight from Amazon if it’s cheaper
– Free year of Amazon Prime – That’s what many people are most excited about (Hey, why doesn’t Prime use flaming naming? I checked, and it’s because it launched a couple of years before the fire contagion)
So far, the phone has simply been announced. It’s not available to ship until the end of July. Let’s see if people are still all fired up about it when they actually get to use it!
