Re: FN-FORUM: Selling online

date posted 9th August 2004 13:28

In my experience (in advertising sales) the problem
with modern advertising is that it's too conventional
(using 'safe' methods of communication), the other
problem is, is that modern advertising is little more
then 'shop window' or 'front door' advertising, I.E
the advert is only designed to get the
punter/recipient of the communication to the
advertisers front door or shop wiindow, the
advertising the you and i are exposed to is not
designed to get us over to the other side (the
advertisers side) of their shop window/front door (so
essentially, you'd be better of doing DM-direct mail
or CC- Cold calling for higher response ratios, hence
the words 'shop window' or 'front door' advertising

Be honest with me, when was the last time that you saw
an advert and you and your mind actualy said
consiously/sub-consiously 'I am going to buy that
product', I cant remember this scenario happening to
me once

The other BIG problem with advertising is that, the
power of advertising is too much in the hands of the
'ad agy's and marketing comm's agy's', and not in the
hands of the advertisers themselves and the respective
advertising media proprietors, unfortunately this has
an adverse effect of advertising in that it restricts
the modes/mediums and forms/formats of advertising
that the advertisers will advertise on, i say restrict
becase of the attitude of ad agencys/marketing comms
agencies have towards the respective advertising media
proprietors, in my experience there seems to always
exist a 'state of war' betw. these sets of companies
which doesn't exactly help the advertising industry

Also the other big problem is thatbecause the power of
advertising lies predominantly in the hands of the
advertisng/mktg agy's and because the restrict the
mediums that their clients can communicate on, this
means that they are missing out on more effective
forms of advertising, i.e new forms/formats of
advertisng that are outside the remits of the
advertising mediums that ad agencies already recieve
commission from (so called AMBIENT MEDIA/MODES) and
forms of advertising not mentioned in these 2 remits

The main reason why advertising agencies don't like to
invest their clients money (advertisers budget) in
ambient modes or forms outside ambient media is
because the don't like outsiders or external inflences
in relation to advertising/marketing communications
(as it would cut them out of the loop), and also
because of the fact that traditionally the
advertising/marketing comm's. business has always
being a closed shop, in that it doesnt like
external/outside creative influences (2 classical
examples being the Guiness advert and Malteser advert
scenarios, i my self almost came a cropper)

I think that it was the 'disgraced' ex owner/chair of
Atari, Jack tramiel who once said 'you cannot compiute
with image', what he was saying was. you can throw all
the advertising and marketing money can buy, and the
best marketing and advertising minds that money can
buy, but that is not going to make that
consumer/person buy your particular product or service
any more than it's going to make them buy a
competitors p/s (It still needs to be sold)

Also the concept of branding/brandnames, to me in
business terms, that should be classed as illegal
alongside MLM,, Network marketing and pyramid selling
etc, chain letters and Nigerian 914's

Put it another way what's more important the product
or the brand, which came first the product or the
brand, ultimately when the punter/customer goes to the
other side (the advertisers side) of the shop
window/front door what are they handing over cash for,
A product or a brand

To put it another way, and to show why branding and
all this crap doesn't work is to cite the follow
Classic Analogy, namely the Atari/Comnmondore(CBM)
scenario

We all know, for those that followed that industry
during the 70's to the early 90's, that these 2
companies where the equivalent to what M$ and
Sony/Nintendo are now, then difference was was that
Most of today's M$ and Sony/Nintendo techology can be
trace back to something that Atari pioneered, invented
, created or designed, whether it be memory bank
switching, plug in mem. modules, graphics/sound cards,
plug and play, joystick ports, USB, PC standards (h/w
and s/w) I can go on and on, the difference betw.
Atari and their then competitors and the latter day
competitors is the Atari was designing or inventing
technology that had something intrinsynchly Atari
about it, i.e Atari unlike their then competitors and
the latter day competitors wasn't designing technology
for technology sake (so called 'off the shelf'
techology, which is the technology that atari's then
competitors and the latter day competitors are
essentially selling, as they are selling 'Atari
technology' in someone eleses box') it was designing
Atari technology (of which most of the principle are
patented)

It is also a well know fact that CBM (Commodore) and
their leading edge products (the Vic/C64, to start
with) and i only found this out recently through
someone who personally knew the designer behind the
Vic/c64 hardware, I was told that the sound/graphics
h/w behind the c64/vic computers was basically a
'reverse engineered' or semi cloned version of Atari's
h/w (the orig. 400/800) obviously CBM didn't want to
do exact copies otherwise they would have had to have
paid Atari BIG royalties and secure licences, not only
that but commodore didn't exactly want to give
potential commodore users the feeling that all they
were buying was Atari cloned/hacked h/w in a CBM box,
also commodore didn't want to admit to the industry as
a whole and potential CBM users that commodore didn't
have the 'technology' to compete directly with Atari,
because before CBM come out with the Vic, it was a
widely known fact that CBM just could'nt compete with
Atari purely on technology

The same thing happened a few years later with the
Amiga (which was designed/developed by ex atari
staffers, using Atari development tools, funded and
financed by Atari, they (Atari) even went as far as
signing a long term contract for any chip set (h/w)
that Amiga came out with

After Tramiel left CBM, arround the time of the
'infamous' video game crash-1983-4 (which most in the
industry blamed Atari for) Amiga were teetering on the
bring of going bust, tramiel who had just taken
control at Atari, tried to get amiga for a pittance
(as Amiga still owed Atari money) CBM did some fancy
footwork themselves and ended up with the spoils (the
h/w that eventually became the amiga) now the
interesting thing was although CBM legally couldn't
stop Atari from coming out with an Atari version of
the Amiga, but as the new owners they knew that they
could make things difficult (i.e lawsuits... legal
proceeding etc etc) and because Commodore were very
close to getting the product out *(and Atari had
nothing... at the time) they knew that because of
Atari's financial situation Atari could'nt afford
legal proceedings and at the same time try and
design/develop a product and get it to market at the
same time a CBM and their Amiga, Atari had to bite the
bullet (even though they still could legally use the
Amiga h/w chip set) and come out with a low cost
alternative (the ST)

How the interesting thing is during the Atari 8bit/CBM
8bit wars, both companies were spending similar
ammonts of money on advertising/marketing (up until
tramiel bough out Atari) the machines were using
similar technologies (even though CBM never officially
admitted that they were basically 'reverse engineered'
or hacked/cloned versions of Atari h/w), and until
tramiel's Atari buy out, the c64 was less expensive
then it's atari equivalent

The 2 reasons why CBM were succesfull on the 8bit side
was that unlike Atari CBM got the software support
from independent publishers, atari wasn't as
successful in this Area, and Atari users had to put up
with conversions from the C64, which although the h/w
was similar, was widely acknowledged that Atari's h/w
in certain respects was better then CBM's, the other
reason being the pricepoint

However on the 16 bit side the ST (for the first 3/4
yrs) was slightly more successful then the Amiga
(initially) however when the STE failed to take off
(sales wise) in the states and price cutting by CBM on
all amiga models the Amiga overtook the ST/e etc in
the same way the c64 overtook the Atari 8bit (mostly
by the 3rd party software support and also lower
pricing) remembering ofcourse that Because Atari were
using the own technology (although new 'atari'
technology hadn't being developed in the entire
lifespan of tramiels Atari Admin, the lynx, the
Jaguar, the Tramiel 7800, the portfolio and the
panther/Atw/Abaq, were all designed/developed by non
atari co's and sold to Atari, so that Atari could show
that they have the market viability in marketing
technology... as we eventually learnt, it didn't quite
work out) and that most of CBM's h/w was either
designed by or based on Atari h/w, CBM couldn't out
technology Atari and Atari couldn't out technology CBM
(or themselves even) and because of the shift over to
PC, and the JAP CRAP, both companies eventually
succombed, the ironic thing is, is that it was a well
known fact that Atari was a better known name in the
industry and consumers then Commodore, and yet that
one fact alone didn't save Atari or CBM from the
eventual fate that befell them both, yes I accept that
Atari still exist as a software company, but tell me,
with all the money that they have made form driver
seriews, half life, matrix etc.. where are Atari in
relation to Eidos, Activision (founded by ex atari
staffers), Electronic Arts, Microsoft etc... i think I
have made a point, it's not the brand, it's the
product.. if it was the brand, Atari would still be
doing h/w and so would commodore, but their not doing
the h/w, Atari are now engaged in an area of the
industry (that they created) that Atari previously
(According to Atari's history as a software co.) had
always failed in

Atari and CBM ultimately failed becuase they didn't
advance the product(s) enough that they were founded
on and they didn't advance the technology enough that
they were orinally founded on, they didn't tell the
buyer 'what will an atari do for me, that a cbm
computer wont' why shall I by CBM/Atari, Atari and
commodore made the marketing mistake of putting the
brand before the product, and ultimately that confused
the buyer as the buyer only buy's the product not the
brand, and because AtariCBM were'nt telling the buyer
'what will an atari do for me, that a cbm computer
wont' why shall I by CBM/Atari?, the obvious is going
to happen, both co's are going to go under, and it's
even happening now

Like tramiel said himself 'you cannot compiute with
image', what he was saying was. you can throw all the
advertising and marketing money can buy, and the best
marketing and advertising minds that money can buy,
but that is not going to make that consumer/person buy
your particular product or service any more than it's
going to make them buy a competitors p/s (It still
needs to be sold)

At the end of the day, the 3 best forms of advertisng
(direct/indirect) is A- the product, B- The
customer/punter C- The Employee (working of the
company selling the p/s)

Who can better that

Regards

CA





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