Kindle Vs. Nook Vs. iPad
New handheld devices for displaying books, magazines and text electronically have been receiving a great deal of press. It’s exciting to compare their technical features, but as a branding company we’re interested in the communicative qualities and features of the names.
Experience shows that a memorable name, like Amazon’s Kindle, can help a product rise to the top.
At first glance, the names Kindle, Nook (Barnes & Noble) and iPad (Apple) don’t seem to focus on the unique selling points of an e-reader. For example, Kindle suggests stoking a fire. This could be a metaphor for stimulating ideas—something we easily associate with reading a book. But there are so many metaphors for generating ideas, so why Kindle? Why Nook? Why iPad?
What do the individual names communicate?
Kindle
Dictionaries offer synonyms like these for Kindle:
- fire, ignite
- arouse, awaken, bestir, challenge, rally, rouse, wake, waken, whet
However, the sounds in a name and the things people associate with a name can contribute just as much to an image as conventional meanings do.
The sounds in Kindle work together to convey a feeling that is thin, light, and agile. Kindle also rhymes with spindle. Together these factors suggest a tool that is lightweight, easy to hold, and easy to manipulate.
What makes Kindle sound light and agile? The i in the stressed syllable of Kindle is the smallest-sounding vowel in the language—in any language, really.
Other studies have shown the k of Kindle to correlate with activity and abruptness. The whirring n of Kindle suggests nonstop motion—just as n does in the stressed syllables of the famous Lexicon brands Pentium and OnStar.
Here is more information on how sound symbolism makes for winning names.
Nook
Barnes & Noble’s Nook promises a new technology that simulates the familiar, solitary comfort of reading in an enclosed, protected space. That’s an original, attractive angle to come from.
True, the word nook is not used frequently, yet it is widely recognized. Who hasn’t heard of a breakfast nook? Being different yet recognizable is certainly of the makings of a distinctive brand name.
Plus… the word “nook” also looks and sounds like “book”.
Through imagery, both Kindle and Nook convey warmth and comfort—Kindle through fire and Nook through a familiar, homey place. These images lend a dynamic warmth to Kindle and a safer, more reassuring warmth to Nook.
Comparing Nook to Kindle in sound yields a surprise: even though Nook is one syllable and two letters shorter, Kindle actually sounds lighter and thinner!
That presents a nice selling point for Amazon, but Barnes & Noble can counter by exploiting Nook’s relative sturdiness from a phonetic standpoint. In focus groups, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Nook rated more durable based on phonetics alone.
More information on the anatomy of a name.
iPad
Apple’s iPad was instantly met with vocal resistance. A New York Times article noted that hours after the iPad’s announcement on January 27, 2010, Twitter was full of jabs at the iTampon, based on associations between pad and feminine hygiene. Others complained that in certain English dialects iPad was nearly indistinguishable from iPod. A few weeks later, the complaints subsided.
This is a familiar scenario in the branding world. Pentium (a brand developed by Lexicon) raised hackles when Intel introduced it in 1994, yet went on to become the most powerful brand of the following decade.
The lesson is that any major product introduction draws intense interest and scrutiny, and it’s natural for intensity to be accompanied by noise.
So what’s the real verdict on iPad? It’s a typical Apple trademark, a simple word pad with the prefix i- that marks many of Apple’s biggest-selling consumer products.
True, pad sounds a lot like pod in some English dialects, yet not as much as pin and pen do in other English dialects. Does the name iPad give the device an advantage over competing devices? Yes, precisely because it links in sound and structure to the hugely successful iPod and iTunes along with other Apple products.
Which of the three is the best brand?
This is a provocative question, but also a misleading one. It’s a mistake to judge a brand’s qualities without considering how it meshes with the personality and strategies of the company that owns it.
iPad, though it lacks the warmth of Kindle and Nook, was the perfect choice for Apple. What better way to position this as Apple’s newest offering in a hugely successful series of hits, all beginning with an i- prefixed to a one-syllable, generic noun?
Amazon and Barnes & Noble are in a different kind of business, so they really didn’t have Apple’s strategy available. The choices made by Amazon and Barnes & Noble point out an interesting difference between the strategies of the two companies.
Above we noted that Kindle and Nook both convey warmth. But because of the associations tied to these names, Kindle sounds more daring and Nook sounds safer.
Amazon’s choice made good sense for Amazon: it’s a dynamic company, very successful at selling everything under the sun. Barnes & Noble, focused on books, and under pressure at a time when book selling faces major challenges, understandably chose a safer name.
An even more important difference from a branding perspective is in expansiveness, a brand’s ability to encompass future growth. Imagine the world two or five years from now, when e-readers have many more features beyond reading electronic material. How will the names serve them?
It’s easy to imagine a computer, a GPS system, or some kind of robotic handheld tool named Kindle. It’s harder to imagine these same gadgets with the name Nook.
Nook has its own strengths, focused more on the present than on the future. Given Barnes & Noble’s current position in the book-selling business, this may have been the correct strategic choice for them at that point in time.
Kindle is the more expansive name of the three, and we think it was a great choice for Amazon.
UPDATE:
Another new e-reader brand getting lots of attention is Kobo. The product is getting good reviews. Also to its credit is that Kobo carves out new territory in the e-reader landscape, with a distinct personality from names Kindle, Nook, and iPad.
More than the other names, Kobo sounds more like a buddy than a reading tool. And yet Kobo is an anagram of book! What an ingenious, playful way to refer to what the device is about.