Unsterilizing the silicon: PC marketers have commoditized their business

Brandweek, Jan 12, 1998 by Tobi Elkin

HP and Compaq have less direct contact with consumers and may only hear from a customer via an 800-line when there's a problem. Both PC giants last fall eschewed speeds and feeds advertising with softer, lifestyle-oriented themes, but for all the anthemic creative, critics say, the advertising remains product-, rather than relationship-driven.

"Compaq is trying to hit a chord deep in our psyche . . . it's aspirational advertising, but it's a rehash," said Richard Zwetchkenbaum, an industry analyst based in Marlborough, Mass. "What does it really say about the company?"

"We have a clear iconic message baked into our product that has to do with the safety of computing and the possibility of it leading to a better life," said Gateway's Taylor. "I don't know what Compaq is trying to bake into their product. That computing is a good idea, great. What is the value that it stands for? What is the human feeling?"

One criticism of most of the PC advertising today is the same one directed at the car business: that the ads are too coldly product-focused and not enough talking to consumers about what they need to know to make a confident decision with their thousands of discretionary dollars.

"At the end of the day, every computer brand is competing against all the other great brands--The Gap, Starbucks, Saturn, Nike," said Interbrand's Straw. "That's a kind of mass intimacy. But if you take really strongly branded brands, there's a feeling of real closeness . . . little communities of intense association of intimacy with a brand. That kind of intimacy is a real challenge, and the branding for most PC companies out there hasn't reached that sense of closeness or intimacy that other successful brands have."

Ironically, ailing Apple Computer has had the most powerful brand legacy among computer companies, a luster it is attempting to leverage again with its "Think Different" image campaign, which broke this past fall. Critics insist the campaign merely serves to buttress existing loyalties and impels long-time Mac evangelists to peddle the faith more actively.

Still, no ad airs in a vacuum. Concurrent with the campaign, Apple has embarked upon a program intended to build upon the strengths of its core user base; a series of relationship-building initiatives with the publishing/graphic arts and education markets. Its "Power of 10" program with schools offers 10% of the purchase price of a Mac to a school in the purchaser's area. The school accrues financial credit toward the purchase of its next Apple products. There's also the Apple Club, a Web-based group that users can belong to for a small fee. The Club offers special mailings, deals and the Apple Online store, where consumers can custom build and order a product off the Web. Apple plans to re-invigorate the Apple Club this spring in order to lure new customers with a variety of yet-to-be-determined retail and Web-based initiatives.

If truly breakthrough branding ideas are few and far between in the business, there are working models for successful relationship marketing, if it is defined simply as good support and incentives to buy more branded stuff. The industry has seen a wave of improvements in technical support, enhanced Web sites, newsletters and built-in software guides, not to mention closer attention to the out-of-the-box-experience undergone by consumers as they unpack their new PCs and set them up. Packard Bell NEC, for one, marketer of two lines of consumer desktop PCs popular among first-time buyers, has poured $100 million over the past 16 months into beefing up 800-number tech support. The company claims hold times are now down to less than two minutes, compared to the former teens and low 20s. And its Cyber Trio software, built into the computers' systems, is designed to foment a more user-friendly start-up process, enabling users at all levels to set up a comfortable computing environment.