better product wins
I never formally studied marketing, but I read some books about
marketing, among them "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Al Ries
and Jack Trout. At first I was impressed by this book, before I spent
much time thinking about it. After reading it over and over, and parts
of it many times, and pondering it, I came to the conclusion that this
book contains probably more crap, page for page, than any other book
I ever read. Especially chapter 4, The Law Of Perception.
It was at this time that I said "to hell with books about marketing"
if this is the kind of crap they are full of, and I decided to do my
own thinking on the subject. Poor as my own thinking is, it can't be worse
than this kind of crap.
As I said in a previous message, my theory of marketing is:
Rule 1. Between unequal products, the better one wins.
Rule 2. Between equal products, the first one wins.
The word "better" in rule 1 has to be properly understood.
It means better for the customer's purposes. Different customers have
different purposes. And their purposes are not necessarily what the
creator of the product thinks their purposes ought to be.
Obviously these rules assume that a product is advertised enough so that
people know of its existence, and is accessible so people can get it if
they want it, and is not prohibited by law.
Al Ries and Jack Trout believe that whether a product wins has nothing
to do with quality of the product.
ADVERTISING:
Can an inferior product be successfully advertised so that it wins over
the superior product, thereby invalidating Rule 1 ?
David Ogilvy was probably almost the ultimate guru on the subject of
advertising. He speaks from experience as a professional advertiser.
He says that if he puts his mind to it, he can write an advertisement
that will sell an inferior product. Once. As soon as people find out
that it is an inferior product, they stop buying it. In fact the more
money is spent advertising the inferior product, the quicker people
find out that it is inferior and the quicker they stop buying it.
Therefore his policy was to advertise only the best products.
Not even the great master of advertising, David Ogilvy, Himself, could
violate my rule number one.
MICROSOFT:
Can rule number 1 be violated by means of enough market-domination,
such as Microsoft has?
No. Not even Microsoft can violate rule number one, keeping in mind
a proper understanding of the word "better".
( BTW, Microsoft spends something like half a billion a year finding out
what people want. This fact demonstrates that Microsoft understands the
meaning of the word "better" in rule number one. )
As evidence that even Microsoft can't win with inferior products, I offer:
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/990921/IBD.html
Jerry Story
|
Not Categorized, Please Help
|
|
