What You Can Do With Marketing Spin

Gizmodo had an interesting article the other day on the worst tech gifts for Christmas. Included in the list were a cheap Android tablet and a 4G phone that’s really 3G. One interesting point is that with good marketing, you can spin even bad or has-been products or services into high tech wonders.

For example, carriers are selling 4G phones that are really 3G (in a prior blog, I explained how the market ‘redefined’ 3G data rates to be classified as 4G). Why sign up for a 3 year term on a device that is already prehistoric? Fourth generation LTE networks are being rolled out now and with 3G devices you’re stuck with dinosaur data rates that even in today’s environment are excruciatingly slow.

Here’s another one- watch out for ‘Android’ marketing spin. I’m a strong supporter and use Android devices because there are good products out there. But in his article, Jim David talks about an unbelievably slow, buggy, and shockingly outdated version of an Android tablet that is marketed for Christmas. It’s terrible that the ‘sexiness’ of technology like Android and ‘tablet’ devices can sell without regard to the underpinnings of solid, quality, reliable software. Marketing spin does a lot for turning bells and whistles into something that products are really not capable of doing. The new Kindle Android tablet is receiving really poor technology reviews but the marketing machine will sell millions (they’re forecasting over 3 million in December).

Here are two more poor technology practices that we are confronted with daily, thanks to the wizardry of marketing:

- ‘Free apps’- Apps cost money to develop, unless it’s done by high school kids without the needed quality, standards and reliability required for today’s devices. You might not pay upfront for apps, but the cost will be borne somewhere. If anything, most ‘free apps’ are poorly presented and do a disservice to the premium capabilities the companies have worked so hard to deliver to the market. The ‘freemium’ marketing gimmick can actually hurt a good service.

- The absolute Best Technology Voice and Data packages- the wireless industry must think their customers are brain dead. They devise packages with unbelievable technical jargon advertising the best stuff that no-one understands! Let’s see- “UNLIMTED calling (local to and from same
carrier numbers) with anytime minutes (but you pay bundled prices) and unlimited local calling only at night and weekends and unlimited local receiving if in your area but long distance and roaming charges are extra”. Excuse me, but can you understand this? What unlimited am I getting and what is my monthly bill going to be?

I’m all for using technology to offer increased productivity and to save customers money. But wouldn’t it be better for more transparency in some of the products and services offered? I think it is way better to be honest with what the offer is and what the product can do.