Displaying items by tag: Marketing

Marketing is a fickle thing and one that can come back to bite a company when they are least expecting it. What has happened is that the marketing people working now are forgetting that the market has a much longer memory than they used to and, of course, the Internet never forgets.  This is what Microsoft is facing right now as they try to compete with Apple in slim and ultrabooks (as well as regular notebooks and other products).  For years they have portrayed Apple as flashy and overpriced using materials that increase the manufacturing costs without any real benefit to the consumer. Now, however Microsoft is finding itself being bitten by those same marketing campaigns as they work to raise consumer and enterprise interest in Windows 8 (all flavors).

Ok I love the surveys that seem to sprout like magic whenever we get close to anther iPhone launch. It is not just that these are ridiculous precepts of surveying a small sampling and thinking that you are getting an accurate depiction of what a market is interested it is more than they always have some of the most bizarre interpretations that I have ever seen. These are the types of analysis that would have given my statistics instructor a heart attack. I am getting ahead of myself so let me explain in a little more detail.

Today is the day that Microsoft is allegedly going to release Office 15 to the world (although most are galling it Office 2013 now). The rumors started to surface when it was announced that Microsoft would be holding an invite only press event today (July 16 2012) in San Francisco. Just like the debut of the Surface Tablet Microsoft is keeping quiet about the actual news they are going to give out at the event today so they could be announcing almost anything including their own phone, but we think that is unlikely. We know that Microsoft intends to include Office 15 with Windows RT so it is probably much more likely we are going to see something on their new productivity suite.

The sales numbers are out for “PC” shipments from both IDC and Gartner. The two fortunetelling firms differ on many numbers but both agree that the shipments of PCs (yes from Apple too) have declined by .1 % over Q2 2011. What we find interesting is how these two very different reports have been portrayed in the media. In particular we find interesting the way that most sites pick and choose the data they want to convey while citing both reports. So let’s take a look at the whole picture and see if we can have some more fun with numbers.

Microsoft is looking to get a jump on Windows 8 sales and as such has announced the general availability date. Unlike past releases Microsoft is going to pull the wraps off of Windows 8 (including Windows RT) in October instead of November. We are thinking that they will still probably favor the end of October instead of the beginning simply to make sure they are in the stores for the Holliday rush. This would seem to be a smart move on Microsoft’s part especially as Apple should be launching the next version of the iPhone sometime around then if the rumors are true.

In our articles and editorials you have heard us use some interesting terms that are not commonly used in marketing or PR. One of these is the Corporate Personality another is the Corporate Mythology. Now, you are never going to hear PR or Marketing people use these terms as they are not always positive. However we feel they are accurate. In fact my first exposure to the term Corporate Mythology was in a class on economics and its impact in military strategy. In it the instructor asked us to identify certain key people in a corporate economy and describe their function in the business and how they affected the whole. When we were done he showed us how these central people formed the corporate mythology by comparing them directly to Norse, Greek and Roman Mythology. It was an amazing thing to see in practice.

As part of their War on Apple, Samsung is pulling off some very neat tricks without having to spend a penny. Some of these are basic PR tricks like showing the phone off in the right ways with the right ads, giving extra color choices and also telling people how many other people want it. Of course we would never say that Samsung has not put in its fair share of money to get the Galaxy S III and other products off the ground (not including all of the law suits going on), but that sometimes the best tricks are the ones that do not cost you anything.

Microsoft is making a “super-secret” announcement on Monday and it has already invited select members of the press… Wait a minute does this sound familiar to anyone else? Sorry we had a momentary flash back to some of Apple’s announcements. In fact it this this similarity that makes many people believe that the show on Monday June 18^th will be the official show for Windows RT (and a Microsoft made tablet).

So yesterday (Friday May 18^th) we heard that Apple was censoring the word “jailbreak” in iTunes and the App Store. This was reported by a few sites and seemed to be rather odd after the backlash from the obvious censoring of a single search string when using Apple’s Siri Voice Assistant. When we ran the story on Siri we had a rather large and enthusiastic response to the article. The one thing that many people kept trying to say was that Apple did not alter the results, but more on that after we talk about the jailbreak issue.

Asus has recently released their quarterly results for the other side of Asus. This is the part of the company that makes and sells notebooks, netbooks, the EEE Pad, PC and Slate. It is also a part of the company that we expect to turn into its own fully fledged market with the potential for direct sales in the future. The numbers look pretty impressive so far with gains across the board.