Sell a Name or an Image?
The new marketing "trick" seems to be to give a product a nice name, which sounds "expensive" and "design" like. So the marketing boys come up with a nice name. Compaq for instance has been using "pressario" for a while now. But when I say that I have a "pressario", do you really know what kind of computer I have? Do you know which computer to buy when you hear my praise on my great new computer?
Probably not. And that's what amazes me at the current marketing tactics. Let me give you a couple of examples. If I say I have a pressario, I could have any of these computers (and this is ony a small selection of the ones I found):
So there's a problem for Compaq, which they have created themselves. "Pressario" does not identify anything. It can be a laptop, a desktop, and AMD processor, an Intel processor, with or without DVD player, small or large amounts of memory, and with or without monitor or keyboard. So what does "Pressario" mean?
The problem seels to be common for modern marketing. Look at the Renault Mégane for example. When Renault just started with the Mégane series, it was really clear what kind of car you were buying. But now, there are many Méganes on the market. Here's a small selection of Mégane models I found:
So what kind of car you drive? In the old days, when you had a "Mustang", people knew what car you had. The name was synonym to an image, and people knew what car to ask for if they wanted to have it. And the sales people knew what car to order for you.
No matter how hard you try to give a product a name, if you use that same name for a different product, people get confused, and you will never be able to build an image.