Spotted an interesting discussion about a recent report by Nielson Netratings, which included some insight into awareness of some new-ish technologies or tools like RSS, IPTV, VOD or wikis.

Ian Delaney talks about the low rates of awareness among the general population, while Stuart Bruce prefers to focus on what he sees as the surprisingly high rates of awareness shown by the report.

Once the acronyms were explained, Ian notes that rates of awareness were higher:

When researchers referred to these technologies in full, rather than using acronyms, recognition levels soared. 333% more people, for example, understood ‘video on demand’ as opposed to VOD. 350% more had heard of a personal video recorder.

I’d be willing to bet that once if they’d tried asking about awareness of Sky Plus, rather than PVR or personal video recorder, the rate of awareness would be much higher again.

David Phillips sums this up nicely:

You don’t have to call it near field communication – you can call it an Oyster card or a season ticket.

It’s not about the technology, what it’s called or an acronymn. The consumer forms an emotional bond with what they buy, and that’s almost invariably a brand, not a technology.
People don’t buy digital music players, they buy iPods.

People don’t buy PVRs, they buy Sky Plus.

People don’t buy VoIP, they buy Tesco Internet Phone.