Welcome to my old blog, which I no longer maintain.
For details of my current professional services and activities see www.martingeddes.com.
October 31, 2005
A bargain at half the price
Was out taking the new little madam for a walk (well, a carry) this evening when I spotted this O2 mobile advert down our street:
So whilst embodying the obligatory we're-so-clever advertising visual and wordplay puns, does it actually make people buy more O2 stuff? Did Telefonica get value-for-money when they bought O2 today? Are they buying into a compelling vision?
Well, let's look at what O2 is selling, and then think what the alternatives might be.
So having this unheard-of "i-mode" thingy (and you can bet 98% of the UK population haven't heard of it) lets me, um, access the internet and search for jobs. Err, but don't you use a PC at work on the quiet to surf Monster.com, not your phone? Can't recruiters just call me like they usually do? And can't I access the Internet already from my phone? Won't it be expensive? Hmm... where's the benefit?
And the alternative? Well, perhaps a few of those billions spent on 3G upgrades might have improved the core product that generates 90%+ of the revenue -- voice calls -- just a bit? One picoiota? A nanocent? Err, nope. No improved voice call quality. Can't tell if someone is around before calling them -- or even if they're in the country. Zero presence and availability features. Still can't access your voicemail via a multimodal client, listen to voicemails out of sequence. And so on.
I love this industry. No other is as screwed up in such wonderful and creative ways.
PS -- The only mention of i-mode on the O2 home page is buried away, the main promotion is for an unrelated prepaid discount campaign, and a search box to help you hunt it down? You've got to be kidding me. Nice to see such joined-up marketing.
PPS -- The hyphenation of i-mode is guaranteed to make word-of-mouth spread slower. Why have some name that's hard to spell in Google? Even O2 can't make up their mind: the advert URL is ".../i-mode", whereas on their home page it's ".../imode".
Posted by Martin Geddes at 9:05 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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