A piece in the NYT describes the difficulty many people have understanding the specs that marketers use to sell consumer technology today. Interesting to see the connection with stereo marketing in the 80’s, which was so overburdened with dense, seemingly vital, actually often useless, technical jargon.
I think there are two fundamental truths of marketing consumer technology:
– the more dense and technical the pitch, the more alluring the product will seem, and the harder it will be for the customer to make an objective choice – exactly what marketers want, of course (do they actually teach this in business school??)
– use lots of exclamation marks (80 watts RMA, now with new UltraSuperHyperMatrixSound!!!!!!; 200 megapixel with 150X digital zoom!!!!!!)
Consumers need help. Have we gotten to the point where home technology has become so complicated to the average person that there is a market for consultants to help people make the right choice? As the techie in my family and social circle I get these questions all the time. Many people use the salesperson on the floor – exactly why marketers use all of that gobbledygook, of course.
The large retailers now have their geek squads to help customers install technology – a move made necessary by the increasing complexity of equipment and the difficulty to the average person of simply getting it up and running. But how does the average joe even choose, for example, the right VoIP solution (or even know that it is there to be chosen), much less install it?