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April 06, 2006
iPod: removing the coolness factor
Companies invest tons and tons of cash in emotionalising their brands . Think Mini, think BMW or Siemens. They are all keen on being perceived as innovative, lifestyle-enhancing offerings. Strangely, classical brand building often ends within known boundaries, or what is known as classic marketing. Two of the above mentioned brands offer good examples of bad usage of new opportunities: enter videocasting.
Given Apple's iPod has the lion share of the portable player market, it is probably a good idea to have a closer peek at what iPod users perceive as cool. The iPod is a lifestyle accessory - it's not a technical gadget. Look at Apple's advertising with the dancing silhouettes: it is all about fun and emotion. It makes no difference whether the silhouette is sitting in a cubicle wearing a suit and tie oder whether it is boogying away on a street market. The relevant message for marketers here is that they ought to take boogying into consideration when creating content. The coolness factor are one, the iPod, two, the content.
With this in mind, let's have a closer look at three videocasts by the above mentioned brands. For the duration of the Leipzig automotive trade fair, Mini has retained the services of well-known vloggers XOLO.TV plus Thomas Gigold, a known German blogger to run a vlog. Now, remove Thomas from the videocasts (sorry!) and you're left with an extremely cool format that plays nicely to the medium: interesting, funny, genuine bit-sized boogie-entertainment.
The other two brands do exactly the opposite. Have a closer look at BMWs and Siemens vlogs or podcasts. These guys will explain sheer driving pleasure to us, not. Boogie? Nah. Opportunity missed, worse, brand damage. We want emotion!
Hint: offer these videos for download, as official communication. But not as a video- or podcast (or vlog or vodcast).
Posted by Irakli at April 6, 2006 02:29 PM
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Comments
Thanks fot the plug. I hope you are enjoying the vids. We;ve got a few good ones coming up still, and next week we have our videobloggingweek 2006 "minimoment" contest so anyone can add thier own vids to the site. I think that is key to. Cheers,
Gabe MAc
Posted by: Gabemac at April 6, 2006 08:10 PM