Displaying items by tag: Marketing

Word has reached us that AMD has cut their PR and Marketing department and as of this writing only three unnamed executives are left there from the original team. This is very interesting news for us out here especially anyone that has been dealing with AMD for any length of time. The cuts were originally blamed on a poorly performing PC market and increased interest in tablets and smart phones. This sentiment was shouted down by some in the press who wanted to know how both Microsoft and Intel managed record quarters if the PC market was down. However the original stories (published by some) were quickly updated to tone down these remarks. Of course considering where Read came from and some recent statements (and rumors) that AMD is going to try and push into the SoC market I am not surprised to see this type of spin on some of the articles.

I have to say that I knew something was going south when I received an email from the long time New Products Release Manager (many of you will know who I am talking about) that he was leaving AMD. I was introduced to two new people that I had never heard of before. After that I did not hear anything from AMD until I ventured the question about a possible AMD FX Sample for review. The reply was short, professional and rather cold considering the history I have with AMD (I have been working with them since launch of the Opteron). But as this is a new site and I had ventured out on my own I was not surprised, disappointed yes, but again not surprised.

However, looking back I think that was an indicator that things were not as they should have been. After all you do not just up and leave after 10+ years for no reason.  Something had to clue him into changes being made. Then the response (or lack of response) to my emails after the terse “sorry we do not have any more CPUs, good luck” email was also surprising as even when I have annoyed people at AMD they have always communicated with me.

Still with this move I have to hope that this is a change for the better. In the past AMD has been exceptionally xenophobic about who they talk to, and who they work with. They ended up dragging ATi into this way of thinking as well and pushed many good PR and Marketing people off into other less impressive positions. We can only hope that the three people left in charge are not the ones that I have recently dealt with, if they are then Rory Read’s sweeping action may just end up getting him more of the same and possibly end up netting him even less coverage for the products that AMD is pushing out or will push out.

In the end it is sad that some 1400 people are out of work and that AMD continues to step all over their own feet with one bad move after another. We just hope that this one is not another blunder to go into AMD’s top ten.

Source TechReport

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We have talked about this one over and over and over (is my face getting a little blue?). Microsoft just does not get the market they are trying to sell to any more. Don’t get me wrong, I like Windows 7 and their new server stuff is fantastic (we will be covering a lot of that very soon), however when it comes to putting out hardware or even assisting in hardware production they are clueless. This is doubly true for their mobile division. So far we have heard them put down both Apple and Google saying their products are immature and chaotic respectively. Then we heard Andy Lees (the guy in charge of the Windows Phone Division) comment that the iPhone 4S was a wasted opportunity and that talking to a phone was not productive… I think one of the PR guys needs to pull Andy aside and ask him not to talk quite so much.

Even beyond Andy putting his foot in his mouth on occasion we now have Steve Ballmer telling us what we should want in a phone OS. His last comments on Mango and in turn the MetroUI were almost pleading in their attempt to get the market (and the consumer) to understand that giant square tiles are a good thing. Guys, they are not. We tried them here at DecryptedTech and they just did not work; just like they are not going to work for Microsoft.

Now, Microsoft has run out of ideas and quite possibly time. They are going to attempt to get the manufacturing cost below $200. Oddly enough this announcement came only a day or two after it was discovered that the iPhone 4S had around $188 in hardware inside its housing. While this will make the devices less expensive to make, and in turn should make them cheaper to buy that will not spell success. You have to not only have a compelling product (which they don’t) but also know how to market it (which they do not). On top of all that you have to offer an infrastructure to support it that makes sense and that people want to use (sorry third strike there Microsoft).

Mr. Ballmer, if you do not believe me about cheaper does not win the market; just take a look at Android tablet sales. In many cases they are $100 less expensive and yet the market still keeps buying the iPad… this is despite better hardware too. In the end you have to have two (no three), Ok three things.

1 a compelling product (not great or even that innovative, just compelling)
2 a great marketing team that knows its stuff and can give the product its own image
3 A legal team to fight off the ones over at Apple.

Picture Credit AllThingsD

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If you have not heard of Harry Potter then you have been living under a rock. The Boy Wizard has become this generations Star Wars. The series of seven books has amassed a serious number of followers (I have read them) while the movies have spawned a monster of a merchandising machine.

As I live in Florida I have visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studio’s Islands of Adventure more than once and after being open for almost a year there is still a multi-hour wait to get into some of the stores.  However, even though the creator of this phenomenon makes a good deal of money from all of this it is not as much as she could.

The solution? Well J.K. Rowling has teamed up with Sony Entertainment to create an online virtual world called Pottermore. In this new virtual world they are extending the world created in the books to allow fans (both young and old) to take on new personalities and experience the world of Hogwarts (the best Wizarding School in Brittan and pretty much the central location in the books. Officially the new site opens up in October, but ever since it was announced they have teased about a close Beta beginning on July 31st. At first all you had to do was submit an e-mail before July 31st.

However, because of that most people submitted the e-mail and that was that. People still visited Pottermore.com but it was not as much as it could have been (at least from what we are hearing). So how do you fix that? Again a simple answer. You change your mind before the morning of the 31st.
Fans began to hear that for the Beta there was only going to be 1 million people allowed to enter. Now that is a pretty big number until you realize that more than a million people went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (the final film in the series) on opening weekend and it is still going strong many weeks later.

So, on the morning of the 31st at 8am London time fans flocked to Pottermore.com in the hopes to be one of the few to get in. However, the powers that be changed their minds once again. Instead of letting people in they were going to have a multiday (seven for the seven books to be exact) scavenger hunt (maybe they stole that idea from us…). On each day you would have to hit the site by 8am London time (3am Eastern Time in the US) and try to find something called the Magic Quill. Each day a clue (a question that could be answered if you have access to or have read the books) would be posted on Pottermore.com. This Clue would give you a site to go to at Pottermore.com. There you could click on a flash image that of the Magical Quill and you could put your name in for the Beta. Even if you had the answer you had to be quick. If you did not get your submission in before that days allotted number of positions was filled you were out of luck.
But wait! There were still four more days so everyone that did not get in check back tomorrow! As you can see what Sony has done is create a site that is going to have other companies clambering to put ads on it. Before the site is even live they have found a way to get multiple millions of hits (perhaps even tens of millions).  From what we are hearing although the early entries are done no one has actually gotten into the site. In order to do so you have to wait for an e-mail to arrive with a special link to gain access to the site. While everyone waits they are still going back multiple times every day to see if anything has changed. Can you imagine the advertising allure of a site like this, especially one that is already geared towards kids and teens? J.K. Rowling may truly want to create something for the fans of her books, but I am certain that the executives at Sony are seeing nothing but dollar signs at this point.

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*updated 08-08-2011 17:46PM EST with correction on number of days the magic quill was available

William Shakespeare once wrote, “A Rose by any other name would smell just as sweet”.  Now this is a very true statement but it does not apply to marketing and the human perception of brand recognition. The global PR machine has done such an excellent job of making the brand the thing we buy that shifts in name or logos can have massive impacts on the way we purchase things. Let me give you a funny example; Back when it was first released the Chevy Nova was considered a market success in the US. People were buying it at an acceptable rate and of course Chevy was making money. Then they tried to market it to South America. It failed and I mean epic failed. The reason for this fail? The name; you see in Spanish (and its derivatives) Nova sounds like the phrase “No Va” which is apparently short for “No Go” as you can imagine that name killed the sales rather nicely.  Now car manufacturers make sure their product names are acceptable in the countries they plan to sell them in far in advance.

So nVidia has dropped the GTX 460 on the world. Starting at midnight the reviews, press releases and all the usual brouhaha surrounding a new product launch began.  For us, as a new site we are not going to expect to see one of the new GF 104s for some time. Thankfully we have plenty to keep us busy as we get the site up to speed. No the thing that we wanted to go over is the interesting e-mails that we have seen from AMD.