Attended the “Branded in Boston” conference today. Lots of smart people from the Boston market talking about how their brands were formed, what challenges they’ve faced and what the opportunities are in the Commonwealth. One company that gave an amazing presentation was iRobot. One of their slides stuck out in my mind because it was hilarious and also showed the importance of marketing.

iRobot was originally going to name the Roomba the CyberSuck and DustPuppy. After realizing that these names were awful and semi-pornographic in nature, they hired an outside marketing firm to name the product the Roomba. Just goes to show that even if you make a kickass product, it never hurts to bring in some outside expertise.