Jonathan from the Dim Bulb blog has a super-tasty riff on the marketing of Microsoft's Zune. Read the intro and then read his full riff...
"People are too busy enjoying their Apple iPods to listen to Zune's marketing, so what is Microsoft going to do?Spend more money on ads, of course!
It has already wasted millions on state-of-the-art web design, artsy films, and beautiful Peter Max-ish advertising. The branding conceit was that Zune was all about sharing music, and had some built-in whatchamacallit to beam songs to other Zune devices.
Unfortunately, people already share music on their iPods: two people each grab an earbud and, voila, you've got sharing. Hand the player to a friend. Play songs on a computer. Zune offered to fix a problem that nobody had."
>> READ MORE <<
Great post. I blogged about this about a month ago when I saw a very uninspired pic of Gates and Allard holding Zunes. They looked like they were forced to take a family picture with relatives they don't like. I can hear them thinking, "We know...this looks just like an iPod. It's a rip-off, in fact. But what do you expect us to do?????"
Instead of trying to make a place for themselves in the mp3 player market, they should focus on that cool, un-Microsoft-like invention called Surface.
Posted by: Dave | November 12, 2007 at 12:43 PM
I just read the entire article. Very cool stuff and he's right on point.
Posted by: Branding Blog | November 12, 2007 at 04:14 PM