Illustrations: Anthony Lawrence

Then, Karan had gone with the idea. But as the week opened, he found himself faced with a serious inner debate. Then why are we building a brand and not a product? What ranks higher, product building or brand building? Do we have a shampoo, or do we have a brand? Does the consumer want brand or does he want product? What the heck am I doing here? And what has a name got to do with anything?

Karan sat half-lying on his chair, listening to the music streaming out of his computer. And then his eyes slowly took in what he had been unwittingly staring at, the flaming orange icon of his browser, startling him unusually. Firefox, said his mind; Mozilla, came the echo. Mozilla Firefox, muttered Karan. Why on earth is it called Firefox? For a web browser? What kind of name is that for a product? How do consumers relate to it? And why Mozilla Firefox? Why two names, or is that one name?

On their website, he learnt how it was originally called Firebird, then changed to avoid conflict and that consumers had great difficulty accepting the new name and called it stupid. But stupid or not, Ffx slowly weaned away users of Internet Explorer (IE) and between 2005 and 2008, almost 50 per cent of IE 6 users who shied away from changing over to IE7, crossed the floor to Ffx. Firefox with the most ridiculous name for a browser, he thought. ‘Internet Explorer’ at least told you what it did for a living. Instead Firefox wore a dandy prefix: Mozilla. And it wasn’t even Italian. This is as bad as Lux underwear, thought Karan.

Karan checked his chat window and found Anirudh online. Anirudh was a software designer and worked for a large services firm in Seattle. Striking up a chat with him, Karan said, “These new sounding names — Vaio, podcast, iPod, Ning, Google, etc., which have no known meanings… It seems, today the differentiator could well be how random your name is!”

FMCG, marketing, as Karan had seen, created desire for needs that did not even exist; often it was an idea only in the marketing man’s head! We stick the product to an existing brand name. Then the product has a horrific time marrying into the ethos of the forced brand name... But today, the technologist is saying “I am in the business of creating great solutions for great needs. Create the ethos, the culture, and then call it any old thing, it will dance. Give it a number, call it TI-84Plus; Call it WD40. How does it matter? These are not even words!”

Karan’s batch mate, Rajesh Handa a software professional in Denver, had recently talked about how IT products were based on months and years of testing and research, adding, “Some consumer marketing behaviours in FMCG will startle IT marketers. For example, how come FMCG has a shampoo called Clinic Plus? Isn’t that confusing? I mean imagine if I had Google and Google Plus, I wonder what my consumer will make of it!”

But Ardaas, his cousin and a self-made IT man, brought up a different viewpoint. “Lux uses almost 500 years of soap creating history to produce the soap. By comparison, a software company uses only about 50 years of industry experience and development history. Naturally, the tech product has to go through more stringent tests.”

And no, its products are not based on need, they are created and then adapted to needs. For example, SMS was created not out of any need.

It was a by-product. SMS is a result of a layer of communication that is carried on GSM and other mobile networks. It is part of a protocol that is not used anymore to send commands. Since it exists, some people began to use it. Now, SMS is being explored as a way of communication and is being refined.”

Karan was willing to accept that. “But, all technological inventions seem to be a lot of hard work, lot of labour, research, and huge investment, and better still, produce mass benefits. In comparison, a hand soap is touching how many lives? What great tech feat does it manifest?”

Ardaas smiled, “Depends on what you call “mass-scale benefits”. Let’s see some tech research that has not impacted “masses” — at least for the time being. Roll up keyboards are one. Keyboards that are infrared projections on a table are another. Both remove the hardware required for a keyboard and shift the keyboard to being software driven. Without a need, without it being mass based, it is being developed!