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by gmays·12y ago·view on hn ↗
Intercourse, brilliant name. There are so many funny ways to market it, particularly in the US. In fact it doesn't matter what this app does, the name itself has a lot of potential (it is a cool app by the way).

-At the end of a pitch when users are asked to rate it: Was it good for you?

-Make it social: Intercourse with friends / Intercourse with strangers

-Make it spread: Viral marketing campaign called STD.

-Make it practical: Marketing campaign about using phone/apps safely: Practice safe intercourse.

-Best practices: Never drink before Intercourse or you may not rise to the occasion.

-Have rankings: Let people brag about how good they are at Intercourse.

-Voyeur mode: The feature that lets people watch other people 'Intercoursing' should be called voyeur mode.

-Inactive user message: It's been too long since last Intercourse. Use it to make sure it still works. Call inactive user mode 'High School Band'

-Too short of a pitch: Really dude? Done already?

-At events: Intercourse in public.

-Multiple participants: Group Intercourse.

-Call the intro video: The Talk

-Help/Info section: Learn more about the birds and the bees...

Ok, I'll stop now.

2 comments
I completely disagree. 'Funny ways to market it' will instead be 'Offensive and inappropriate' in many settings. The average person on the street doesn't give presentations, so immediately you're trying to target an education or business market. Is that the audience that will respond best to a name that can be taken out of context or isn't easy to grasp? Simply choosing that name already gives you a steep hill to climb. Not every company can take a name like this and turn it into a viable brand. There aren't that many opportunities to be a Virgin Records and make it work.
This isn't a 'presentation' app, it's not PowerPoint. It's a 'pitch' app. In this context, who gives pitches? That's right, a younger, more casual audience, not 50+ execs.

Besides, contrary to popular belief most people have a sense of humor. It's OK to laugh at sex jokes, it really is. I know there's been a wave of political correctness around here lately, but this is a bit much. It just makes me picture a bunch of boring people with zero personality too afraid to laugh at anything, and thus too afraid to connect with their audience because they just might offend someone's sensibilities.

This is realistic way to make Intercourse go viral (teehee). You need to take advantage of opportunities like this. This was serendipitous, but great marketers sometimes can't even create opportunities like this on purpose.

> This isn't a 'presentation' app, it's not PowerPoint. It's a 'pitch' app. In this context, who gives pitches? That's right, a younger, more casual audience, not 50+ execs.

A pitch is a very popular term in the financial and investment banking(IB) industry. Granted the people making pitches in finance are relatively young, but the audience is usually older. Pitches are usually paired with pitch books[0].

Now it's true that people have a sense of humor. But in these settings you have to let the person being pitched usually make the first move to open the stage for humor or animated language. The risk of offending the people being pitched is usually too great (even in a non IB setting).

I know quite a few teachers/professors/etc. who like using interactive tools who would love this app. Most have a good sense of humor, unfortunately I doubt they would take risks of suggesting intercourse in their classes either (I'd have to ask 'em to confirm).

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_book

Even the top-level domain was chosen carefully: IO often means input/output
The more likely reason is intercourse.com is taken and .io is the new, favorite non-standard TLD in the tech and startup world. Just like .me was a few years ago.