Category Archives: Marketing Mistakes

Magnificent marketing mistakes recorded online for permanent humiliation purposes

Channeling Brands

Posted on by

A local Sprint store sale punk demonstrated Siri on the new Apple iPhone 4S by saying “Siri, I’m drunk” to which Siri relied “There are 15 taxis in the vicinity …” This demo would kill Steve Jobs. Other customers on the sales floor were a mixture of amused and offended, though before the demo all had come cash-in-hand to see the new iGizmo. Each now wore a creepy expression on their mugs — similar to the ones they likely wore upon discovering the Santa Myth (which is not to be confused with the Santana Myth which claims that Carlos can sing). The iPhone’s image had been tarnished by a frat boy stunt in a place trying to sell iPhones. Apple’s G-rated brand was slammed with an R-rated demo, and nobody left that Sprint store with a 4S. Growing or preserving a brand through channels is slightly more difficult than balancing the … Continue reading →

Cisco Kids

Posted on by

Cisco CEO and Cheerleader John Chambers has a gift for understatement. In a recent mea culpa of insight, Chambers declared that Cisco had “disappointed investors and confused employees.”  This is akin to saying nuclear bombs annoyed some Japanese during World War II.  As evidenced by the chart on stage right (click to enlarge), Juniper Networks has been soaring, the tech heavy NASDAQ has been rising, and even the leadership spasmodic Hewlett Packard has been doing better than Cisco in terms of share price. And with little wonder.  Cisco, the once (and maybe future) king of network plumbing did what many large companies do, namely make the erroneous decision to diversify.  Diversification is not inherently incorrect, but it makes sense mainly for consumer products, markets where brand consciousness requires different brands for different products or price points, or where the primary market is completely tapped.  Cisco did not face a saturated … Continue reading →

MiSFiT

Posted on by

Microsoft has lost it’s marketing mojo. Perhaps I should not base this analysis so heavily on their mobile offering, but having just returned from the massive CTIA event and witnessed Gates’ Goombahs slake Microsoft shareholder wealth into oblivion, I’m none too charitable.  Sure, Microsoft continues to milk the desktop cow, and the garner some gaming coin by Xboxing, but the world is rushing toward mobile and Microsoft is nowhere to be found. Literally.  Microsoft was so artfully concealed behind the Sybase booth (Sybase for cryin’ out loud) they were all but unlocatable.  It did not help that Microsoft’s booth manager squandered precious vertical real estate, apparently choosing a black funeral shroud for their flying buttress.  The booth itself was the Japanese/Swedish version of death décor — white and hard, modern, lifeless lines.  For an event soaked in the radical, consumer-focused “joy” of being wirelessly wired at all waking hours, Microsoft … Continue reading →

Market Omissions

Posted on by

Poking couch potatoes is useless. For as along as television cable companies have provided set top boxes, one or another technologist has pimped the possibilities of interactive television (iTV).  Some were horrible notions, such as Microsoft attempting to turn your TV into a dial-up terminal and thus annoying the rest of your family as you v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y surfed the Internet.  Others sought to enhance viewing experiences by offering multiple picture-in-picture angles of sporting events.  A few tried to make a buck by littering your TV screen with icons that would instantly purchase merchandise. They all bombed, and for the same reason (and continue to do so). The fundamental flaw behind iTV is that television was designed specifically to prevent interaction.  A couple of generations of boob tube bumpkins have stridently avoided interacting with their parents, spouses, children and reality.  Television was a tool for disconnecting the brain and thus decompressing … Continue reading →

Paranoia Pays

Posted on by

Steve Jobs needs to call Andy Grove ASAP. Groves, one of Intel’s founders, was very clear on the concept of paranoia in the tech biz.  Perhaps being Hungarian and thus too well acquainted with Soviet oppression, Andy learned paranoia at a young age.  But he refined his paranoiac inclinations being in the technology business, a war zone where corporate death comes quickly and painfully.  Like a battlefield where every soldier is out for himself, nobody and no company are safe from competition. Not even Apple. Wildly popular and cult-like, the iPhone and iPad made indelible marks in the consumer electronics space.  Though pads and smartphones existed before Jobs took on the job, Apple refined the product category and advanced the expectations of the market.  Combined brilliance in product design and marketing led to worldwide buzz, techno lust and a stock price that makes members of the House of Saud blink … Continue reading →

Ballmer Bye-Bye?

Posted on by

Is it time for Steve Ballmer to bail? I don’t pick on Steve for the fun of it — not entirely at least.  I bring up the dreaded discussion of putting a new captain at the helm because after a decade with Ballmer as skipper, the good ship Microsoft is foundering, leaking between nearly every plank.  In an era where everything changed, Microsoft did not change fast enough and has failed to catch the rising tides. Apple has not capitalized on everything and yet Apple now has a market cap larger than Microsoft (which we can take with a few drops of sea water since Apple’s forward P/E ratio is more than 50% higher than Microsoft’s, showing that navigators see better odds with Jobs on the investment horizon). Drucker wisely noted that “Business has only two basic functions – marketing and innovation.”  High tech is uniquely a product of both.  … Continue reading →

Mobile Movement

Posted on by

The mighty fall, upstarts rise, and nothing is guaranteed. Comscore published their periodic post of positioning between portable platform providers (tell me when you get sick of my constant alliteration … it won’t stop me, but I do like the feedback).  Of interest are instances where major players are advancing, retreating, or showing signs of stagnation.  In Comscore’s latest totable techno tout sheet we see: RIM:        42.1% rising slowly (+1.3) Apple:      25.4% stagnant (-0.1) Microsoft:  15.1% falling fast (-4.0) Google:     9.0% and rising fast (+5.2) Palm:       5.4% and sinking (-1.8) Most noteworthy and yet most predictable is Microsoft’s plummeting while everyone else is either growing or staying steady.  Microsoft’s mobile operating system has been derided, insulted, defamed and dismissed by many, for sound reasons.  Unlike competing platforms, one routinely needs to buy a new handset whenever Microsoft releases a new OS (I say this with my tongue buried deeply into … Continue reading →