This is the homepage of cnn.com right now. I’m sorry, social media douchebags, but a twitter account does not have the same advertising impact.
When I was very young (7 or 8), my Dad and I were watching TV and ads started running. My dad sighed. He told me that he couldn’t buy that product anymore. “Why?”, I asked. “Because they just spent too much money on advertising.” He explained that advertising/marketing took money away from R&D and the cost of advertising/marketing was passed on to the consumer (I doubt he used all those words, I was EIGHT). This way of looking at things has stuck with me.
This spendy advert and others like it are a small part of why it took Motorola so long to follow up on the success of its original RAZR phone, and part of the reason DROID does not differentiate itself from other smartphones with any notable *hardware* advances (to credit Motorola with Google’s turn-by-turn navigation is a fallacy). Where’s the capacitive OLED touchscreen? A revolutionary form factor? A battery that won’t drain by the end of the day? Many of these advances are stuck in R&D labs.
Apple’s initial marketing was Steve showing us the phone. Palm’s launch involved one of their top execs using the product. In both cases the marketing slant was simple. Product good. People buy. I am not saying Apple and Pre don’t market/advertise, but at least you could tell the products were both worthy of huge ad spends. I hope Motorola takes the money they make from Droid and funnels it right back into R&D. Design is the new advertising!
Bullshit. Apple spends a ton of money on advertising. You better believe they drop more cash in a month advertising the iPhone than Moto does on the Droid in an entire year.
