The Nexus One event happened yesterday. It was a pretty big deal actually. Google’s very own phone (much as they try to deny that). But as I was following the event live, I couldn’t help thinking how much better it could’ve been. It could’ve been better planned, it could’ve been better presented and it could’ve been a better kept secret. Why do I say that? Because knowing what’s going to happen at an event like this is total buzz kill. And marketing works a lot by generating that buzz.
This does not make the Nexus One a bad product. It is in fact a great product. We knew that from the moment the first pictures got out and the specs were launched. We received confirmation about this very fact when the multiple hands-on reviews went out before the actual announcement took place. And that is where the problem lies. We knew. We knew too much about the new product to be properly excited for it. Does that hurt the product? It most definitely does!
Peter Chou (CEO, HTC), holding up the Nexus One
What we got to see was (almost) completely uncontrolled by the parent company . We got to read about in depth reviews about pre-production models. By the time production models came in, we had moved onto something else. Our attention span is not measured in days, it measured in seconds. Sure, the Nexus One is still trending on Twitter after 24 hours. It had dropped off in the meantime but that was because it was night time in the western hemisphere. But the Nexus One, throughout the event, never reached the top spot on twitter even once. I know this for a fact because I tweeted through out (@shailpik) the event. That to me signifies the fact that there was some buzz missing in the whole mix.
There’s a reason why companies have such strict NDA’s and why development teams are kept in total silence. Building a brand image is not easy. It takes a lot of planning and orchestration. A lot of things come together to create a proper hype in the market to ensure that the product is well-received. There should be excitement and expectations should be realistic. You give them the information in one go and overwhelm them so much that they reel under the weight of it for the next few days. You dazzle people with your product’s brilliance and that makes them talk about it in their own terms for days. That is the holy grail of advertising — making the average Joe talk about your brand. Making them brand ambassadors is of the utmost importance because mass market products like the Nexus One need that word of mouth affiliation to make people buy. Brilliant ad campaigns move more products because they motivate the viewer to spread the word. Think of viral ad campaigns like the roller-skating babies.
The need for secrecy in such products comes from this need to generate buzz. You will have to imagine what you can’t see. You will have think if you have to imagine. You will have to involve yourself if you have to think and there you have it — you have spent some time thinking about a product. You have invested in it by thinking about it. Now when it comes out, you just have to know how it turned out. This is the human need for closure, for completion. You might not be thinking about it like that but that is what is happening.
So if you have seen and heard about it already, you will want to touch it and not see and hear about it all over again. Ergo — who cares about the launch. Tell me when I can see it in stores or when I can order it. Even when you follow the event — oh well, not much new here. Your buzz is already gone. You have pushed it back to digest the latest hilarious youtube video forward. You may not be a customer lost but you are definitely an ambassador lost. Google should learn a thing or two about generating a hype without practically handing their products over to the blogosphere.
