COMPANIES HAVE TO KNOW WHO THEIR CUSTOMERS ARE

As you all know by now I love having all this tech at the slightest opportunity. It is always a good chance to prove myself or get schooled on what is the best gadget, operating systems or better yet just what the future holds. The biggest challenge has always been that I get to meet people who are so passionate about the products they use and that is it. You can listen to them for hours and all they ooze fanboy fanboy… That’s good and it can never be disputed because we all entitled our opinions as we say it in kenya “Haki yetu”.

What does it take to be a funboy? Let’s take a look at this from a Kenyan perspective. Do you believe that we can or are able to sustain a local brand loyalty without “cash being poured”? My fist cellular gadget was a Sony Ericsson and ever since my loyalty has been with them.  I do believe that they push boundaries when it comes to mobile entertainment. But this does not mean that I follow the brand blindly, I am not that kind of a person and I will never be. This is a character I was born with but am afraid someone will say I am just rigid with this. Well, how much do you know about your product? Are you just a consumer because  there is no alternative, are you helping them deliver crappy services?

On the other hand, do companies really understand who their customers are? Who is the average Apple consumer how about the segments of the whole company’s product line up? How many times have you ever seen an advertisement  and you just did not believe the company had spent that much on it just to communicate to the wrong crowd?

Some guys on the Internet decided to poke a little fun at Blackberry’s new marketing strategy of using superheroes to promote their phones. The new RIM CEO thinks that all that their products need is better marketing, as if the products themselves being uncompetitive with what’s out there in the market has nothing to do with it.

This has been RIM’s thinking for the past few years, ever since some of us realized RIM is in big danger because of Android and the iPhone, but at the time RIM was still making big bucks thanks to market inertia and brand recognition in emerging markets. Now that market inertia is starting to disappear, and RIM is slowing down – fast.

So their brightest idea to stop this was not really to do something about the products, but to improve marketing – first. Their new superhero campaign is also pretty odd, because even though RIM’s market is still largely the enterprise, they are trying to run away from that, and appeal to young people. This what this satirical graphic is trying to make fun of. Because RIM’s phones aren’t really seen as phones for young people, but phones for old people.

While RIM’s marketing campaign is cute, I doubt it will do much to turn things around for them. What they really need to do is to focus on product first, and the marketing will come by itself. A lot of customers and bloggers will give them free publicity if the product is that great. They won’t need to spend tens of millions on great marketing trying to sell bad products. The sooner RIM realizes this, the better. But somehow I doubt that will happen with the new CEO, which seems to follow the exact “vision” from before, but with less experience than the old CEO’s.