Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing: Good Old Consumer Marketing

Tals_klonie Hi everyone,
As you probably know, these days we’re working on our upcoming Klonies Blog. Part of this effort was to look for blogging talents in our group and get them blogging.

Let me introduce you to my first guest, which I hope you’ll get to read more at the Klonies’ Blog. Welcome to Tal Dagan, the General Manager of the Avatars Group. Well, enough talkin’, rock on Tal!

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One of the recent success stories in the device market was Motorola's success with its sleek RAZR devices. Motorola guys were lately quoted saying that in some regions, close to 40% of their total sold devices last year were of this particular model. Now that's an amazingly high number for a company that produces over 50 models a year.

Indeed, everywhere you’ve seen a Motorola phone in the last year, most chances it was a RAZR device. I have seen this taken to the next level in 3GSM in Barcelona; after wandering around the conference, the RAZR effect was evidently seen not only in the Motorola stand. Every single one of the large handset vendors showed at least 1-2 devices which were very nice replicas of the sleek RAZR design. No shame in the industry...

This is all very nice, but what's so special about it? Just a successful handset model?

But there's much more to it.
Although at the beginning of the RAZR, over two plus years ago, it started as just another cool device, its incredible success actually caused Motorola to shift its strategic marketing focus. No more focus on winning the technology/spec battle but rather having "just as good features", and puting the entire weight on design design and design; giving the users a new and exciting form factor, a unique design which is targeted at precise segments of the market. We all know that the handsets have become a user's "statement about themselves" a tool to express one's self... let’s give the user just that.

This may sound trivial, but remember that these industry players have been focusing, and throwing away, billions of $$$ on a technological battle, fighting vigorously on who will be the first to come out with 5,6,7,8...mega pixels cameras, first with double, triple or quadruple packet bandwidth, XHTML and not HTML and so on.

Not only that, but notice another small but significant shift...think about the 'device name': no longer Motorola A900, A1000, V980 or E550 but...RAZR! This makes so much sense. Why should a user remember, or care, if his phone is N-90, or P990 or E750??? I bet 99% of users do not remember the device’s name one month after they bought it. However, go check this with RAZR owners...The opposite will be true. Now that's creating brand attachment.

Following the worldwide RAZR success, Motorola has gone out with its PEBL, ROKR and SLVR models. All follow the same path of the RAZR - a new exciting form factor, no focus on technical firsts, and a cool self expressive name (guess what the PEBL looks like...).

This, in my mind, is good old marketing genius.