Boy, that was a really short iPad focus group

I'm not going to pretend to review the non-existent iPad that I'm holding, but I have to register my surprise at Apple's naming faux pas. Seriously, did they not conduct any focus group testing? Perhaps there are no women who work at Apple?

If you did a quickfire word association game in a roomful of women between the ages of 18 and 50, you'd find out pretty soon that the iPad is a feminine hygiene product with a touch screen. I'm not the first to point this out . . . yesterday, iTampax was a Twittering trending topic, plus there's already a plethora of jokes and spoof ads online at Apple's expense.

I just finished reading David Ogilvy's "Confessions of an Advertising Man" and a point he discussed is particularly apt in this instance:

"Perhaps the most important operation agencies are ever called upon to perform is to prepare a campaign for a new product which (sic) has not yet emerged from the laboratory. . .
. . . As I write I am engaged in just such an operation. It has taken more than a hundred scientists two years to find out how to make the product in question; I have been given thirty days to create its personality and plan its launching. . .
. . . It they would just invest half as much in the creative work of launching new products as they invest in the technical work of developing them, they would see fewer of their conceptions abort."

This kind of reminds me of the Chevy Nova (in Spanish = doesn't go) and the Ford Penis, I mean Pinto, (in Brazilian Portuguese slang = small penis) . . . but at least these names worked in one culture. The trouble with the iPad is that it fails at the first hurdle. Will it be an iFlop?