Uber is the new Ultra
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006My kids say it all the time, and I picked it up from them. I would tell them their rooms were uber trashed and if they didn’t clean them they’d be uber sorry. But the first time I saw the word uber officially used in marketing was about a year ago for a tech piece and my first thought was, “what…did a 14 year old gamer write this?”. I certainly couldn’t see myself using the word in real conversation much less marketing.
Since then, I’ve seen the word uber used several times in marketing materials to convey an extreme…above and beyond the rest. It has appeared on things from technology data sheets to mainstream conferences like this one from the Strategic Research Institute.
Today, heaven forbid, I used the word to express an extreme situation with one of my business partners in a conversation. I’m obviously not a 14 year old gamer…I’m a 40 something year old marketing professional and business owner. He
looked at me oddly and said “what the hell does uber mean?” So I had to explain it and in doing so had to say the word several times.
And you know what…… it could just displace ultra as a prefix for products. I can just see it now: Uber Dawn.
It’s a lot more fun to say than ultra.