Why Would you Name a Textbook Rental Firm Chegg?

Textbook rental firm has a bad name.

On my flight back to Austin from Key West yesterday, I flipped through the channels on the airline’s audio system. One of the channels on American Airlines is called Sky Radio, where firms pay to be interviewed for “news” stories. I listened to an interview with one of the founders of Chegg, which is sort of like a NetFlix for textbooks.

It’s an interesting idea, and perhaps a good business (so far over a million textbooks have been rented). But the name is horrible. Throughout the entire segment I couldn’t even understand the name of the web site. Only at the very end did the interviewer spell it out. But it was still hard to remember, so I had to google “rent textbooks” today to remember what it was.

Why on earth would you set yourself up for an uphill marketing challenge with such a difficult name?

At least there’s some redemption: Chegg also owns Cheg.com with one ‘g’.