Remember the Super Bowl commercials of 2000? High speed blazing graphics, obscure mind bending images, scarce facts or ideas, resulting in disappearing products and companies. These dot.com fiascos were the results of the convergence of exploding technology and an engineering mind set that said, “We build it so they will come.”
The perpetrators thought they were above the old rules of business and beyond the old needs of marketing. They thought they deserved success because they had invented a new high tech whistle, bell, or mouse trap. They burned their investors’ dollars.
Not all new high tech products have succumbed to that kind of self-defeating arrogance.
iPod is a shining example. It created and filled a need flawlessly and then followed the time-tested rules of good marketing.
But many of those “dot-bombs” were built on a wild idea, a technological add-on that added complexity to a relatively simple and understandable base. The products weren’t needed and added no value, and the business plans had no substance. Investor insanity fueled the whole mess.
Here are the fundamental errors that took place, as those new “ideas” failed in the transition to the marketplace:
The connection from a product to a user failed.
A product must have a benefit that somehow makes the user’s life easier, not harder or
more complex.
The user must believe that a product always works for me and serves a beneficial need. I
don’t know or care how it works, but it should fit into my life, and it comes from somebody I
trust and like.
The technological “Knowledge Explosion” results in instantaneous obsolescence. Remember when the car industry was condemned by building superficial planned obsolescence into every model year? Now change seems perpetual, with almost weekly add-on features, especially in the electronic arena.
While the intervals betweens technical advances are compressed, the time for consumer acceptance and assimilation stays slow. Right now, at least for many older people, they are in the “bafflement” stage. At the other end, or the hot-shot engineering group, more and new is always better, and the fundamental marketing things don’t apply any more.
If electronic trends continue, everyone will soon own a one-ounce portable device that has instant access to all human history and knowledge. It connects with everybody---with sound, pictures and print, right now. And of course it is yours alone with iron-clad assurances of privacy.
But trends fall of their own weight, and this one-ounce thing would be too heavy. It goes too far, too fast. It does too much. People want and need control and choice. It’s already happening, and the smart marketers are whittling away the fat. Instead of going deeper into the labs, they are going deeper into the consumers’ habits and preferences.
A scientist said, “The answer, when we find it, will be simple.” The answer for new high tech products, and for their marketing, will also be simple. The fourteenth century scholar, William Ockham, said, “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” This is “Ockham’s Razor,” which in modern terms is, “Keep it simple, stupid.”
If you had the job of advertising a new high-tech product, I’d urge you to consider the user’s point of view:
Does it always work?
Do I need it?
Does it fit into my life?
Do I care how it works?
Do I trust and like the maker?
No matter how high the technical complexity, the road to simplicity will get to the customer quicker. The product may be complex, but the motivation to buy it (if you find it) will be simple. Technology is only a tool that may provide control, choice, convenience and clarity.
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