Logitech changes name to Logi

NEW YORK — Logitech is dropping the tech. That leaves ... Logi.

The computer accessories maker may face a little backlash, if history is any guide. Or the name change could turn out to be genius, if varying pronunciations don’t mess with the clean identity shift they are looking for.

New products will be labelled Logi. You’re supposed to pronounce it like “logic”, with an “ee” instead of an “ic”. They jettisoned the tech because “tech is everywhere,” Ms Charlotte Johs, Logitech’s VP of brand development, told Gizmodo. “Tech is in the air you breathe ... It’s in your clothes ... In the future, ‘tech’ doesn’t say anything.”

Companies often drop outdated descriptors from their brand names, often successfully. Think Apple Computer or Kentucky Fried Chicken. “Companies, when they start out, find comfort in a descriptive word” as part of their name to announce themselves to consumers, said naming consultant Anthony Shore of Operative Words. “The problem with these words and word parts is that they become dated as companies grow, evolve, and diversify.”

Hence the latest truncation. “Is any tech product a tech product anymore, or is it really a consumer product?” the company’s CEO, Mr Bracken Darrell, told Fast Company.

The renaming also signals a broader shift in strategy, which might one day include Siri-like functionalities.

“I think, looking into the future of speech recognition, how we talk and communicate with things will change,” Mr Darrell said. “Logi helps us be a lot more personal in that world. Tech is a little dated. It can get dropped,” he said. “Using Logi over time, it will get traction.”

If you can say it. “One challenge that Logitech might find, or Logi, or however I’m supposed to pronounce their name, is in the pronunciation itself,” Mr Shore added. “Is it ‘lo’ or ‘la’? Because it could go either way. And then you’ve got the g: Is that a hard g or a soft g, like ‘ja’? Then there’s the i. Is that pronounced ‘ee’ or ‘eye’?” BLOOMBERG