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Posts tagged marketing
Global Geek News Podcast #36
Sep 6th
Here are the shownotes for episode #36 for the Global Geek News Podcast.
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Stories:
- EA spends 3x more on marketing than development
- PS3 selling more units than the Wii after the price drop
- US Government says all music downloads are theft
- Utah law punishes texting drivers with 15 years in prison
- Don’t like the results of a vanity search? Don’t sue Yahoo
- Wi-fi cafe users love Apple and like to spend
- The Kindle is more environmentally friendly than actual books
- Amazon makes up for 1984 book deletion
- Watching TV while surfing the net? You aren’t alone
- Top developer reveals sad Android Market sales figures
Tip of the week: How to fix the YouTube jumpiness in Firefox
Host: Jeremy Bray & Wesley Faulkner
Windows 7 is… Windows 7?!
Oct 14th
Greetings Readers!
In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft has announced that the name of Windows 7 will be… Windows 7. Sounds fancy doesn’t it?
In the announcement, they listed some reasons why they went with the name, such as not wanting to go with a year because its not a yearly release and that an aspirational name like Vista wouldn’t do the new OS justice. Since this is the seventh release of Windows, they say that Windows 7 just makes sense.
While that logic would have made sense if they had been going with this naming scheme from the beginning, the average consumer won’t give any thought to this being the 7th Windows OS. My theory? I think the marketing department was on vacation when this decision was made after thier latest batch of ‘I’m a PC’ commercials which still don’t make sense.
This is just the latest example showing how out-of-touch Microsoft really is when it comes to branding a widely used product. Microsoft needs to get some marketing people with a little bit of creativity and that actually understand the average consumer. Calling the new OS Windows XP 2.0 would have been a better idea since they are looking to put Vista behind them and people already love the experience of XP rather than Vista. Personally, I will always be a fan of the Longhorn name until the day I die.
The first thing people will hear about the new OS is its name, so it needs to be something that inspires curiosity and confidence at the same time. While the name certainly isn’t everything, it is probably the single most important thing from a marketing standpoint. Until the new Windows OS can prove itself, it will have to rely on marketing, something that is already very restricted with this name choice.
Only time will tell if this is a good move or not, but I’m predicting this merely be the first mistake of the new operating system.
Do you think this is a good name? Do you have other ideas for names? If so, leave a comment!
-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray
Blu-ray Needs Better Marketing and Quick!
Jun 4th
Greetings readers!
Some very disturbing number have emerged this week regarding Blu-ray and the fact that a majority of HDTV users don’t even know about the format. According to NPD’s latest customer awareness survey, only 45% of HDTV owners are “familiar” with Blu-ray, which is only up 10% from last year. This means that over half the people that should know about Blu-ray aren’t even familiar with it! With such a small increase over last year, it is clear that the marketing behind Blu-ray is only marginally effective. If those numbers weren’t ugly enough, only 9% of that 45% have any plans to purchase a Blu-ray player. Out of 4 million potential customers, that is a pathetic number.
Since the end of the format war earlier this year, the amount of press about Blu-ray has dropped considerably. While this has not helped their cause, it is far from the primary cause of adoption problem that Blu-ray is facing. While I do believe that Blu-ray player price point is a large problem with blu-ray, that would only help to increase that 9% of people who know about Blu-ray and plan to purchase it in the near future. This is only part of the battle. Finding a lower price point around the $250 range or lower would do a great service to help improve that miserably low percentage, but that still does little to help the awareness problem that the format is suffering from.
Sony and the other backers of Blu-ray need a massive awareness campaign similar to that of the digital tv switchover if they expect to get the word about about their great format. Saying that a movie is coming out on both DVD and Blu-ray at the end of a commercial is not enough. Commercials talking about and showing the benefit of the format, especially on channels that broadcast in HD would be a great start, but you cant stop there. Work with stores such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy to create large in-store displays that showcase the benefit of Blu-ray over the DVD format.
Last, I believe that a solid online presence is a key to attracting many people who may be on the fence about purchasing one of the new players. When I do a Google search on “Blu-ray”, the top results do not come from the group behind Blu-ray! There isn’t even any sponsored ads to help point potential customers to the home of Blu-ray. By having a strong online presence, the Blu-ray association can more easily control what users see when they look for Blu-ray technology. While ads and a high search engine ranking will help considerably, they need to take advantage of word of mouth. Utilizing services such as Facebook, Twitter and others will greatly help their word-of-mouth campaign to get people talking about the format. Becoming an ally of the blogosphere would greatly help as well. It is better to be on the good side of the blogosphere than its bad side.
Those are just a few ideas that would greatly increase the adoption rate of Blu-ray and avoid the problem of many customers skipping over the format because they don’t think they need it.
If the Blu-ray backers can market the format properly, they will see great success. If they don’t, they will see very slow rates of growth and will lose many potential customers.
-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray
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