I was at the CTIA IT and Entertainment event in San Francisco this week on behalf of our client Mobile Complete (if you are developing mobile applications, you need Mobile Complete).
While wandering the exhibit floor, I stumbled upon Digit Wireless, who owns intellectual property on creative ways of adding more buttons to a cell phone without them interfering with normal 12-key operations (this may be a boon for one-handed road warriors).
Of interest to marketing types was not their product, but their slogan. It may well be the summarization of the essence of technology marketing, especially in the B2C space. Their equation cum slogan reads:
usability + desirability = profitability
Ponder this simple equation, perhaps as meaningful and concise as E=mc2.
Usability: This means accomplishing a function … a desired outcome.
Desirability: To want something for reasons not associated with functionality.
Profitability: Generated demand.
The iPhone and other over hyped products are cases worth studying. The iPhone does not deliver any functionality that other mobile devices don’t. But it delivers its functionality with such pizzazz, and had such good promotion, that it gained cult-like desirability.
For many years Silicon Strategies Marketing has preached that you must address both halves of the brain — the logical half, and the emotive half. Digit Wireless is saying the same thing in a different way, and showing what your expected outcome may be.
