Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

According to their data, only 2.6% of Brits thought the logo looked like underwear, anyway. It's OK if a small proportion of your users think your logo looks stupid. Obviously, it's nice to avoid it, but this is hardly the disaster that's implied by "there is no excuse."

View on HN

Reminds me of the reaction to Apple's naming of the iPad. Like, "My Tampon?" Ha-Ha-Ha. Big huge deal. Surely they'll rename it. What a horrible name.

But now it doesn't occur to anyone to make that association.

Great example. I recall seeing a lot of people saying things like that at the time. Doesn't seem to have had any consequences.

I was one of the people lampooning Nintendo for the Wii. "Wee" being a very common britishism for "pee".

(e.g. "I want a wii in the corner of my living room!" fnar fnar.)

I figured they'd change it before launch. The joke was stared down by the brand, and the brand won. What do I know?

When the Washington NBA team changed from the Bullets to the Wizards, a common potential problem brought up was that people would call them the Wiz (similar connotation to wee).

The MLS team in Kansas City was initially (in 1996) actually named the 'Kansas City Wiz.' It was later changed to Wizards (and later still totally renamed after changing ownership hands). Their games against the (also since renamed) Dallas Burn generated a lot of childish jokes, as you might expect.

What's odd is in the first tweet they show their logo really does look like underpants. But, the logo is different in the next 2 images. It's rotated 180 deg. After it's rotated it really doesn't look like underpants.

Ah, the amplifying effect of Twitter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com