Who is 'i' ?

'A' used to be the most powerful letter in the alphabet. 'A' was the alpha when it came to companies wanting to be first on alphabetical lists, first in the phone books and first in our minds. I remember working for AAA Destinations, where the A's didn't stand for anything, but they made sure we were always at the front of alphabetical searches. That was before the net did away with that particular search and now companies pay for search based on optimisation algorithms only the boffins at Google understand. The net did away with looking at information from an A to Z view and we now target single pages of particular information. Yet one letter has stood out and grown in popularity over the last 5 or 6 years, especially when it comes to searching and thinking about identifying a growing market segmentation.

I give you the small 'i', which has become the most ubiquitous letter in the alphabet and today stands for ideas and concepts, established by one company but used by many, hoping to ride their coat tails to success. It's not like we haven't been using 'i', it is the fifth most common letter in the English language, it is the first-person singular nominative case personal pronoun in Modern English and used to refer to one's self and is capitalised. So who is 'i' today, who do we associate with 'i' and why 'i'?

For most, the answers are obvious and referring to oneself is a pillar of Apple thinking as they develop technology for our lives, our business and our culture. Great marketing along with innovative products associated with the small 'i' and you get a global leader building a brand that captures the imagination of all who come in contact with its sphere of attraction. Everyone knows the Apple story and can see the wide ranging affects a powerful brand, let alone a small letter, has on the bottom line. There will always be those looking to prosper from the success of such power and Apple has its hands full protecting its intellectual property, branding and marketing because of this.

A logo may not be a brand, but people associate one with the other and for Apple that has meant a whole other story in ambush marketing by anyone in technology wanting to get noticed by a single letter placed before their names. As a rule, not many think to use or steal words or letters from global brands to identify themselves as something they are not. After all what can you do with Walt, Micro, AT, Voda, Ama or even 3 to identify what industry you are working in or what you are trying to say about your product?

Yet the small 'i' has become the singular nomenclature identifying innovation technology today and the small 'i' has been used and abused far more than Apple ever thought it could be. According to iGoogle (?), there are 60 million companies worldwide, with approximately 4-5 million IT companies. It seems half of them have decided to use 'i' as a prefix to show consumers, customers and prospects alike, they too are innovators, they too belong in the rarefied air with Apple and they too get the search optimisation associated with that tiny letter. It's time we agreed to whom this letter belongs, just the way the letter 'C' belongs to the Count on Sesame Street, just the way 'O' (?) belongs to Business, so does the small 'i' belong to Apple.

The only one I know who has really gotten away with it so far, is over a hundred years old and they use a big I in IBM, so I'll give that to them. The rest need to work on their own identity.