I continue to be a fan of Geoffrey James’s “The Sales Machine” blog. He’s recently devoted several posts to Apple and its poor competitors, and all the marketing mistakes they’ve made… including one called Why iPhone Trounces Droid, Palm, Blackberry, and Microsoft. Go take a look so the rest of this makes sense.
My reaction? He’s right on re: Microsoft, Blackberry, and Palm/HP:
- Microsoft’s product doesn’t live up to its promise. Remember, you engineers out there, no one wins if you make a crappy product and then expect marketing to put lipstick on a pig.
- Blackberry is defining itself in terms of its competitors instead of carving out its own niche. It’s like when AMD tried to compete on processors speed with Intel.
- The Palm ad is what happens when you give ad campaigns over to the aliens… you know, the “creatives”… and they run out of control.
I disagree with Geoffrey’s take on Sprint. I can at least see what they’re trying to do. The “first” positioning is pretty clear, especially if Sprint is pursuing the early adopter crowd. Geoffrey thought the ad was unintelligible, but we’ve seen several Rube-Goldberg style ads become viral sensations and have become quite memorable. Though I think this one pales compared to the Honda one, for instance.
Geoffrey also picks one line from a two-page ad and says its reference to Animal House means they’re targeting people who went to college in the 70′s. Animal House is a cult film that was quite popular for college goers in the 90s, so that means Sprint might be hitting 30-something early adopters with cash to spend. As is often the case when you see ads that make you scratch your head… perhaps “you’re not the target audience.” Remember that your subjective judgment of the campaign’s effectiveness doesn’t matter compared to whatever metrics they’re (hopefully!) using to measure the effectiveness of this campaign on awareness, inquiries, and revenue.
Likewise, I gotta think Verizon’s strategy for the Droid is to try and attract the early adopter propeller heads that Geoffrey ridicules, hoping that they will be the ones recommending it to their friends. As a mass consumer campaign? Yeah, it’s bizarre and off-putting. As a way to attract the nerds and geeks? Great stuff. All the things said iPhone hating geeks complain about are in that commercial. The futuristic Terminator-esque branding is likely a sweet spot for that Con-going crowd as well. ”You are not the target audience.”
Now, is the attract-the-geeks crowd a good strategy to pursue? I’m not convinced — these competitors are limiting their audience and not portraying themselves as a viable alternatives to the iPhone. Plus, the iPhone product is still better.
Some of my takeaways will sound familiar for readers of darksidemarketing:
- Keep your marketing team and your product team aligned in their product vision.
- Don’t let the creative types take control of your messaging.
- If your product stinks, marketing can only help so much.
- “You are not the target audience” for judging subjective material.
