Technology Marketing Ideas

Marketing thought of the week - creating vastly different roadmaps to mobile success

This from The Wall Street Journal: Apple and BlackBerry's Research In Motion accounted for only 3% of all cellphones sold in the world last year but for 35% of operating profits, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff. The disparity will become even starker this year when, he estimates, the two will take 5% of the market in unit terms but 58% of total operating profits.

Here are two firms that took very different paths to attain success with their smartphones. RIM was there early with devices that excelled at push email – a capability that filled an almost universal business need. Apple fashioned a mobile device with vast consumer appeal. Great examples of how superior product design aligned with a real market need (or potential demand) can leverage vastly different roadmaps to prosperity. Competitors trying to play catch-up now have some real hurdles to overcome – as Palm – and many others have learned.  The one positive note for other handset manufacturers is that it doesn’t take much market share for exceptional profitability.

Marketing thought of the week - Too much of a good thing?

There was an article I read this week, and for the life of me I can’t remember where, which was about how “location” capabilities using GPS were being built into just about every other mobile application whether it made sense or not. It seems as if we’ve come full circle.

Ever since Charlie Trimble acquired what was a piecemeal Hewlett-Packard project around 25 years ago GPS kind of stumbled around looking for the breakthrough application that would take it mainstream. It found it a few years back when the technology had advanced in accuracy and small, portable personal navigation systems became affordable to the masses.

It’s a good example of a technology that in its early stages couldn’t find a sensible and profitable solution – that then found a solution – and today its accessibility and affordability are promoting solutions even when its capabilities are extraneous or even nonsensical. Charlie knew there was a killer product in the technology but he probably never envisioned developmental hysteria. It sounds like a case now of technology being applied regardless of whether the market really wants or needs the utility it provides. It’s an interesting phenomenon, especially in a down economy.

Marketing thought of the week – I just love magazine ads, so let’s do more of them. HUH?

In an article entitled “Marketing budgets in flux,” that appeared in a recent issue of BtoB Magazine a marketing representative from Citrix was talking about how the recession has affected their marketing expenditures. He was quoted as saying, “A down economy is a good time to take a scalpel to programs, and we’ve certainly done that.” So good so far – but he continued. “The important point is that we now use data and ROI metrics to guide us to things that work or don’t work. It’s not based on emotion but on data.” The underlining is mine.

 

I don’t know why but that sentence conjures up some strange imagery. I have a vision of the Citrix marketing team sitting around a conference table opening up about how radio ads during drive time make them feel. Or how one of them has had a long-time crush on direct mail. I just find that sentence strange.

 

Before the economy tanked was Citrix basing their marketing investments on emotion? How would one do that? If someone cried harder about using a particular tactic would they win? I know my take is ridiculous, but is it any less so than that statement? Only now, when times are tight have they started to analyze what works and what doesn’t? Interesting. So many firms have tightened their marketing belts – I wonder how many of them based their cuts on emotion?