This is a photo of the Apple store window in Union Square, San Francisco. I was on my way to Uniqlo, weaving through crowds of tourists, when the iPod Touch tagline caught my eye:

Engineered for maximum funness.

I’m no fan boy, so the Apple marketing that I’m exposed to is from daily life and normal browsing on the web. In other words, I don’t seek out their products or collateral, but I’ve always thought of the brand as having a clean, simple, timeless aesthetic. So I was surprised to see a kitschy word like “funness,” especially in a tagline that gets prime visibility.

Apple used a similar tagline in fall 2008 for a slimmer version of the iPod Touch, and called it “the funnest iPod ever.”

This current iPod Touch tagline builds on the theme and was introduced in fall 2012.

In terms of naming products, Apple deserves credit for their genius strategy to own words with an “i” in front of them — iPad, iPod, iPhone, etc — basically terms that are instantly identifiable as being from Apple. They also named their ear buds “EarPods,” which is clever. 

With the tagline here, do you think “funness” works or are they trying too hard?