re: New Motorola Brand Buzz
The all to obvious secret of effective marketing for tech companies:
``Motorola is a company that listens more to its engineers, while Nokia listens more to its customers''
Obvious, but elusive!
>> Motorola's New Phones Get The Red-Carpet Treatment
Ben Klayman
Reuters
March 28, 2002
Motorola Inc. is aiming to get the same brand buzz as its larger rival Nokia and is banking on fresh products and a new advertising campaign that includes red-carpet plugs from Oscar nominees.
The second largest wireless telephone maker, behind Finland's Nokia , launched the multimillion- dollar ad campaign last month.
It will run in conjunction with the roll-out of new phones that executives believe will raise Motorola's hip quotient, starting in May with the V70 phone, which sports a rotating cover and circular display with a translucent keypad.
``From a marketing standpoint, this was the right time to start going on offense,'' Geoffrey Frost, head of Motorola's global marketing, told Reuters. ``We are the underdog, no question about it.''
If it can avoid such past mistakes as sticking with a phone design well past its popularity, Motorola may pick up global market share like last year, analysts said.
``The new marketing campaign is a lot cooler than anything we've seen out of Motorola in a while,'' Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown analyst Brian Modoff said.
The campaign's tagline is ``Moto,'' part of the company's name and the name young consumers in Taiwan have given their cell phones, Frost said. The edgy, youth-skewing ads carry such slogans as ``bangbangmoto,'' ``metalmoto,'' and ``minimoto.''
The new products and ad campaign have generated such excitement within Motorola that some employees have taken to giving each other ``Moto'' nicknames, such as ``chattymoto.''
Hollywood Calling
Motorola is counting on the new approach and products to boost its share of the global cell-phone market, which was about 17 percent last year versus about 37 percent for Nokia. Some analysts believe Motorola will pick up one point of market share this year due to the new phones.
Selling more hot-looking phones would help boost Motorola's anemic brand image. It ranked 66th in last year's survey of the world's most powerful brands by Interbrand, a marketing and brand consulting firm. Nokia was 5th and Ericsson 36th.
``Motorola is a company that listens more to its engineers, while Nokia listens more to its customers,'' said Stefan Daiberl, Interbrand's director of brand valuation.
Frost said that has changed and Motorola has set a target of making itself a top-10 brand within 3 years.
While he would not say what Motorola is spending on the television and print ad campaign, Frost, hired from athletic shoe giant Nike Inc.in 1999, said it would be $75 million or more above last year's level.
According to Taylor Nelson Sofres' media tracking firm, CMR, Motorola spent $25.3 million on advertising last year, down from more than $60 million in each of the three previous years.
Motorola's push goes beyond the ad campaign, which was created by WPP Group Plc's Ogilvy & Mather.
The company, based in the Chicago area, is counting on a new range of products, including the stylish V70.
The V70 will be available in May for about $400 through Cingular, the No. 2 U.S. wireless operator and a joint venture between SBC Communications Inc. (SBC - news) and BellSouth Corp. (BLS - news)_However, consumers have been getting a sneak peek thanks to Motorola's Hollywood strategy, in which it supplied the top actors and directors nominated for Oscars the last three years with its latest and greatest cell phones.
On Sunday, British actress Helen Mirren and ``Lord of the Rings'' director Peter Jackson either showed or mentioned the V70 during red-carpet chats on a pre-Oscar show.
``There's incredible power when it's real news, not a company talking about itself,'' Frost said.
Winning Market With Design
Motorola's other new phones this year include the C330, combining a below-$100 price tag with face plates and ring tones that can be customized; the T720, with a color screen and always-on, high-speed Internet access; and the A820, the company's first 3G, or third-generation, phone that includes a video camera and can download movie clips.
It also developed new accessories such as speaker-phones, headsets and chargers to boost its performance with consumers buying replacement phones.
Most of these products were developed under the watch of handset design chief Tim Parsey, who was hired by Motorola in late 1999 from design-leading Apple Computer Inc.
But Motorola has had hot phones before and fumbled its advantage, analysts said.
It had the industry's first flip phone with the MicroTAC in 1989, but did not follow up with another award-winning model until the StarTAC in 1996, said Jane Zweig, chief executive of Washington-area wireless consulting firm, the Shosteck Group. Last year's sleek V60 was the next hot design.
Motorola and its rivals have moved to boost efficiency by reducing the number of phone platforms on which they build and by using common parts to cut costs, analysts said. Offering hot designs more often is another new reality.
Raising the pressure even more is that competitors like Nokia, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Japan's Sony Corp. and Sweden's Ericsson, are also bringing out new phones, analysts said.
``They're not operating in a vacuum. Others are going to come out with wonderful products too. Motorola can't afford to sit on its laurels,'' Zweig added. <<
- Eric |
