So...
What does TiVo stand for? This is a question that comes up a lot. And I do know the answer, as determining the company branding was one of my projects back in the spring of '98. I still have my binder from that project here in my office.
The quick answer: The word 'TiVo' doesn't stand for anything. It's a word we made up and liked alot. There have been lots of attempts by clever people to try and attach some acronym meaning to TiVo, but that's simply not the case. It's just a fun word we made up.
How did that happen?
It actually took a lot of work. And some luck. And some very talented people.
Our 'stealth' name, when we first started out, was 'TeleWorld'. We had rented a small office space from another company at the time, and their employees thought we were some kind of telemarketing group. A few people had guessed that we were doing something with home networks. TeleWorld was a good fake name, it told people virtually nothing about our company. Obviously once we decided what we were going to build, it had to go!
There was a designer up in San Francisco named Michael Cronan, and he was friends with our CEO. We hired him to work with us on our new branding. We needed a name and a logo - a complete corporate identity. I spent a lot of time with Michael and his team. We brainstormed huge lists of potential names. Mapped out the types of things we wanted associated with our company. Lots of draft designs, tons of work and ideas. It was exhausting, but fun.
We knew that we wanted a name that was happy. And it's hard to frown when you're saying a word that ends with an 'o'. So for a couple of days internally we 'tried on' the name 'Bongo'. Just for fun, just to give people the sense of what direction we wanted to head towards. We used it in the hallways, in meetings...that kind of stuff. It made people giggle. It was fun. It reflected a lot of our company culture.
We took ideas for names from anywhere. Online dictionaries were great...the 'Hip Hop Dictionary' was a fun one. Or the 'Dune Dictionary'. Anything that would have an odd or interesting word. I put a whiteboard up outside of my office for employees to submit name ideas. That sparked a lot of imagination, but not always in a useful direction. I don't think we could have been 'WeS*ckLess TV' or 'Couch Potato Technologies'. Those just wouldn't have worked out.
(Yes, I have the binder out on my desk now...)
So 'fun' was important. But even so, there were a number of less 'fun' candidates that got some serious thought. Would you buy an 'On Center'? How about a 'Lasso'? Maybe 'Rojo'? How about 'Jenda'? or a 'Jetset'? At one point I sat down and counted up all of the names we'd put in the hopper. It topped 800. Some died after a quick infatuation, some died due to legal issues. We kept searching.
'TiVo' was in one of the first batches of names we went through. I remember the execs passing on it quickly that first time through (granted, there were a lot of names, and we were brainstorming). A few meetings later it came back up. And it started to stick.
We had to consider how the name would be used. Was it extensible...could it represent a company, a product, a service, a family of products? Was it memorable? Could we own it, define it, make it what we want? We considered practical things as well...could you imagine saying it while answering the phone?
TiVo was the leader. But we needed a logo as well, a brand. That wasn't any easier to create!
Credit for the direction we eventually went with the logo really belongs to an early product marketing person (my first hire here), Lisa Best. Lisa joined us in the middle of this whole process, doubling the marketing team overnight (it had just been me before that).
We were up in Michael Cronan's studio, talking about what the logo might be. The conversation had turned to TiVo being the next step in the evolution of television. Lisa began doodling a darwin fish on some paper, then drew a square, wrote the word TiVo inside, and put some stick figure legs on it, just like the darwin fish. I wish I could say that I had that doodle today, because it was the very first instance of the TiVo logo. It's probably long gone to the bin. But it did spark the idea, we all saw the potential right away.
Michael did huge amounts of work on logos...not just for 'TiVo', but for many of the other names we were playing with. Every couple of days he'd show up with stacks and stacks of logo designs. And the little TiVo guy ran throughout those drawings, playing with caster wheel-feet here, a cut-out TV screen there, orange today, blue tomorrow...variations upon variations. Eventually the smile was added, and the face was born. Very cool.
But there were lots of other 'TiVo' logos Michael developed. We had many choices. And while half the company loved the little TiVo guy, the other half did not. Some people felt he wasn't 'corporate' enough. I remember hearing 'We can't put that on an S1!' from one of the biz dev guys.
So we did focus groups. With real people. They had no idea what we were working on.
They all 'got' the word 'TiVo'. It reminded people of TV (which was good), and of Italian sportscars (also good!).
The little TiVo guy logo was also a hit with the focus groups. We had a different logo that reminded people of a wine bottle label, or a sign for a French cafe. Another logo made people think of car washes and hydraulic pumps. The TiVo guy made people think of words like fun, simple, and happy... and television.
Still, there were lots of opinions internally about the right course to take. So we solved it with a vote.
One morning I took all of the logos we were considering and taped them up in the hallway. When everyone arrived at work they found four round stickers on their desk (two green & two red), and an email asking them to go to the hallway and vote with their stickers. Green if you like it, red if you don't.
The little guy just squeaked out a win over everything else. But...in reality it wasn't a straight up election. It was really an electoral college, with our two founders, Mike and Jim, playing the roles of California and Texas. And they liked the little TiVo guy.
And that's how he came to be. Yes, he got a facelift when he moved into our menus. He wasn't originally the rubbery, bouncy guy you're all familiar with...he was a little more Crayola-ish than Bugs Bunny-ish at first.
But he's served us well, and has become *the* brand within an entirely new product category.
Cheers,
Pony
__________________
TiVo Product Marketing
I do a lot of reading about travel, and a lot of research and planning for future vacations. From the practical to the silly, and from the certain-to-try to the it’s-never-going-to-happen, most of it captures my attention and imagination.
