Hwang, Da-Hyun
Cultural Studies
Professor Kim, Joon-Hwan
10 December 2009
My Juicy Fruity Phone!
TRENDS
Recent IT products and technologies are more human-friendly ever and will be so. Touch phone, which was one of the hot issues in Korean electronic gadgets market, can be one example. From the first half of this year, major actors in this field—Samsung and LG—were striving themselves in introducing and marketing these touch-phone types. The input order (usually by fingers) is achieved in either ways: perceiving pressure or static electricity. Although the haptic technology has been already developed several years ago, the popularization and distribution of it is finally on the abrupt rise. The most current news, the landing of Apple’s “sacred” iPhone finally in Korean market, is well showing the not-easily-cooled down fad towards new and next technologies in electronics field.
This trend in IT products apparently reflects the human desire to use the gadgets with intuition without having to read all the difficult instructions by satisfying human perception. Beyond haptic technology, there is another example: Force Censor Interface. Microsoft introduced mobile interaction through Force Censor which can perceive the ordering language like “twisting”, “bending”, “squeezing” or “stretching” in operating the device (Refer to the picture below) (Microsoft Research). More and more human senses are embedded in the electronic gadgets, which enables the “humanization” or “perceptionalization” of the devices.
APPLE, BLACKBERRY, CHOCOLATE … NOT EDIBLE
It is interesting to note that top 5 most sold cell phones in US market includes Apple and BlackBerry which can mislead some keen fruitarian and/or IT-illiterate (#1. Apple iPhone 3GS, #2. HTC Droid Eris, #3. Motorola Droid, #4. RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700 and #5. Samsung Instinct HD[1]). Yet of course these two are not fruits, but Smartphones (A smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality[2]). Posthumous it can be, this fact of IT product names being so fruity cannot be passed on as a mere coincidence, as there are also other supporting instances within Korean cell phone market trends revealing some intentions and implications behind.
Apple Inc., which started with the name Apple Computers in 1976, was named by its establisher and current CEO Steve Jobs, but how he got the idea was never been explained in person. Yet, using and adopting its fruity name for branding strategy, the first personal computer Apple had released was named as "Macintosh" or shortly "Mac", which is the name of apple variety, McIntosh. Funnily, the logo of Apple is a part-bitten apple, emphasizing its crisp and delicious taste (picture below).
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<Apple Logo (left) and its imitation with real fruits (right, source unknown)>
[1] Information from a review website: http://reviews.cnet.com/best-cell-phones/
[2] Definition from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone
The birth of BlackBerry was not so accidental like Apple. The cell phone production Canadian company RIM asked for product naming idea to a branding company in California, and having noticed the characteristic of RIM’s product (having QWERTY PC keypads of which was not usual type for phones at that time) the consultant conceived of seeds of fruit or berries from the tiny numerous keypads. BlackBerry series has gained great popularity in US since 2002 especially by the mail-using businessmen and women as well as the US president Obama. The logo of BlackBerry is also representing its own brand name, by emphasizing on the seed-like feature.
Korean cell phone market also reveals some interesting features regarding to this edible names while it has some differences to US company and product brand case. The major rival manufacturers are Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, each sharing 55% and 28.2% of the market share (August 2009). Cell phones have their product name and its “pet name” which are easy to be called and memorized by consumers, and it is also noticeable to find some sweets here too. LG marketed their products as Cooky phone, Ice-cream phone, Lollipop phone and (newly launched) New Chocolate phone last month. Though they are not fruits’ name, it is easy to find some sugar sprinkled on them. Samsung’s phone names are prevalently focused on celebrity’s names (such as Kim Tae-hee phone, Yuna phone), but they still have few related to food or sweet’s name, that is: Chupa Chups phone (Haptic Pop) and Corn phone (of which outside cover frame is made from recycled corn by-products). As mentioned products are quite recent ones (more or less released within one year), there were also past instances which also has a significant implication. In 2007, Samsung had a phone whose cover frame’s color was wine red. At first it was not so known to people, but as some people started to call it “strawberry phone” by its color, the name suddenly gathered interests, becoming the most searched words in search sites. There was also a phone called “Banana phone” made by LG and characteristic was yellow as point color of both side lines and its streamline shape like a banana (Sports Khan. 2007).
PRODUCT REPRESENTATION AS FRUITS/SWEETS
<Cell phone advertisements with sweets : Lollipop, Banana, Corn and Ice-cream phone in clockwise>
Here, we can observe the transition of the meaning of language. What has been traditional, established and conventional signifieds’ signifiers (banana, apple, ice-cream etc) are once again encoded with new signifieds (new products). Though there is limitation whether market response is not always within the reach of producer’s intention, LG’s marketing case can be inferred as one example of producer’s grasping of consumer desires as well as slightly embed their marketing strategy. From 2007’s Banana phone which gained quite sums of popularity, LG seems like to consistently pursue pet naming on their products with fruits/sweets name. Similar to BlackBerry case, what can be interesting in this pet naming is that it happens after the product is finished (post-encoding) which means that even the signified-signifiers (the edibles) and new-signifieds (cell phone) is also in arbitrary relation. Looking at the product explanation of each product, the main trend is to endow a name regarding to the physical or design-related feature. For instance, LG advertising tells us that the Ice-cream phone was motifed and named from the ice-cream because of its light and sweet pink/skyblue colors. Lexicon company's president who named BlackBerry for RIM's hand-held device said, "If you want to get attention, you don't describe something, you create a new concept", emphasizing that there need to be no connection to the product.[1] Whether the signifier fits signified or not is not an important matter, but what could be studied is why producers and consumers do this successive naming-behaviour on phones even without noticing the connection in between.
There appears the recycle of the concept which is no more new. The field of IT and electronics is the leading technologies which keeps very close distance to customers. Thousands of new products are released in world-wide market, and it is a difficult job to coin complete new ones for each products. As well as this fact, it has to run the risk of getting unfamiliar thus disregarded by the popular. The circulation of names (language) as well as images seems to be exhausting of course. I once read an interesting comment from one worker of branding company that there are not much fruit left to use its name for. Moreover, what is more problematic is that this recycling is thought as creative and even has to given the ownership. Here, the acknowledgement to creativity occurs only where the anchoring the meaning rather than product innovations. In other words, only the creativity which makes hyperreal dimension is emphasized while the conventional signs are becoming as “trashes” to be recycled.
Eating is also part of consuming. In this sense, the edibles can serve the promotion of electro-devices the best in that they are in fast consumption cycle. In this similarity, it can be symptomatically read that the intention of cell phone marketing is to use up quickly and change them fast. In addition, eating and food conveys the sense of “total affluence”. Although the reality is that the cell phone in hand is just a device which cannot be eaten or licked, by the name of it we face the hyperreality where the hunger (for eating and for consuming) can be filled with substitute of food names or of under-developed cell-phone technology which is still not covering our sense of tasting yet. Cell phone/smart phone technologies and the cell phone market have been increased to the point when rare ground is left for innovation any longer. Thus, it can be suggested that the “concepting” of the product can be adopted as serving the umfathomable desires of tasting and sniffing devices whereas other perceptions are all satisfied. In Alice in Wonderland, the story goes on with a bottle of juice or cake, mushroom poping up constantly, temping Alice to “drink me” or “eat me”. By consuming them, Alice changes her size, therefore, her perceptions to see the outside world. However, she is never satisfied until she goes back to her original state. The nature of advertising through naming is obviously the same—“targeting on selling as many as products but never fully satisfy the desire”. Let us wait and see how deeper the next technology development will tickle our desire.
References
Jean Baudrillard. (1970). The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures.
John Storey. (2001). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Third edition.
Judy Giles & Tim Middleton. (1999). Studying Culture, A Practical Introduction. Chapter 9.
Microsoft Research. (2009). http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/jws/pubfiles/forcesensing-pervasive09.pdf
Sports Khan Internet News. (April 2007). Retrieved 27 November 2009. http://sports.khan.co.kr/news/sk_index.html?cat=view&art_id=200704162128163&sec_id=561101&pt=nv
[1] Canada.com. from: http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/story.html?id=85473082-02e8-4296-80a8-d8bdd4901496