by Alex Goldfayn on February 8, 2010
For communicating about consumer electronics, the most effective language:
- Focuses on life and family value, not technical specifications. How will your product improve your customers’ lives?
- Is low-to-no tech.
- Is in the words of your customers, not your marketing executives.
- Is best developed by excluding your engineers completely. Product developers can tell you what the product does, but under no circumstances should you communicate their language to consumers. Amazingly, many manufacturers are still falling into this trap. More than half.
- Should be broadcast on television and radio. There are affordable ways of doing this, and commercials are not one of them.
by Alex Goldfayn on February 6, 2010
In a 2003 interview, Sergey Brin said the following:
Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.
Search engines and Web sites are not like other high tech products. It takes money to swap out a phone or a computer. It takes time — not to mention fear and risk — to change operating systems. But we can go to any search engine almost immediately, for free. There are thousands of them. Each country has its own leading search engine. Yet, 66 percent of all Internet searches are done on Google.
Why?
- First, Google earned our trust by being excellent: it performs fast, accurate searches.
- Second, it became habit to use Google.
- Third, Google innovates aggressively. This company is never satisfied. It never sits back to enjoy its perch at the top of the Internet world. In addition to constantly perfecting search, Google is now into mapping, phones, operating systems, productivity, applications, etc. When you stop innovating, you backslide. Always.
Trust. Consumer habit. Innovation. All three keep Google on top.
Like its search engine, Google’s lessons are free to use and apply.
by Alex Goldfayn on February 5, 2010
A few years ago, Palm stopped talking to consumers. The silence lasted for more than a couple of years. Even though the company’s Treo smart phones still boasted passionate fans, and it still put out decent iterations of the device, for some reason consumer communication all but ceased.
Then the Palm Pre came out last year, to as much fanfare as the company could muster. The Pre was excellent, a stud of a device. The problem was, Palm was starting from zero. Consumers had moved on. Former Palm evangelists (in its glory days, Palm had countless consumer evangelists) went to the iPhone, and the Blackberry, and the Samsungs and the HTCs.
For years, there had been no communication coming from Palm. The customer base was gone. There was no inertia, no momentum, no foundation, nothing to build on.
(Once the communication started, its centerpiece was a series of weird, new-age yoga-Yanni commercials. It should have featured consumers thrilled for the opportunity to own another Palm device, like Microsoft’s recent terrific spots. But this is a topic for another post.)
On its Web site today, about a year after the Palm Pre was introduced, Palm is touting the Palm Pre Plus, and the Palm Pixi Plus. Do you think consumers know these products exist? Do you think one in five consumers can name the latest Palm smart phones?
I don’t either.
The fatal sequence began not when Palm stopped innovating, but when it stopped energizing and exciting its consumers. Consumer attention shifted to companies which fought harder and more aggressively for it than Palm.
Palm was outworked, and out-communicated.
When you stop talking to consumers, you will lose them. Maybe forever.
by Alex Goldfayn on February 4, 2010
Although the iPad has been dominating the news for the last two weeks, here’s a quick scan of the most popular technology stories on The New York Times Web site:
- Best cameras for under $300
- Facebook privacy
- Learning a language online
- 3-D Televisions
- Texting with your doctor
- Cheap international mobile calls
- Two stories on Twitter
- Textbook Renting
Over at the USA Today, here are the top tech stories:
- What the Madden video game predicts will happen in the Super Bowl
- How youth prefers Facebook to blogging and Twitter
- New 3-D laptops from Acer and Asus
- New cameras from Nikon and Canon
- Videos on Hulu.com
- Apple and Verizon consider iPhone Deal
Out of the top 20 stories on two of the best newspapers covering technology, only one mentioned Apple. I count 11 consumer electronics industries represented in the examples I chose to include here.
The point: there is endless opportunity for you in the consumer marketplace. Whether you sell televisions, cell phones, laptops, cameras, memory, or music players — consumers are eternally interested electronics that can improve their lives. And the media is endlessly receptive to reporting your news.
If consumers and/or the media don’t know you, introduce yourself. If they know you, improve yourself and tell them about it.
We’re incredibly lucky to be in an industry that’s covered by media the way the sports pages cover on the previous day’s games. Leverage it.
