High-Tech Branding: Mythology in Search of a Budget

• Computer giant Dell, with little industry notice or fanfare, filed suit against the worldwide advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, claiming it failed to deliver a worldwide branding campaign. The budget? $70 million.

• Shareware Linux, long an industry sleeper, now has an estimated 12 million users with many vendors porting their software or introducing it as an alternate operating system. In a number of published reviews, Linux is deemed superior to Windows NT, despite Microsoft's billions and supposed technical superiority.

• Do you know who has the largest market share for PCs? Hint - it's not IBM, Compaq or Hewlett-Packard. It's a brand known as ‘white box' - assembled from standard industry components. Additionally, from October to December of last year, no name e-Machine captured 5.9% of the market - not on name recognition, but because of its low price.

These events would not seem to bode well for the concept of high-tech branding, but branding evangelists are not easily dissuaded. Al Ries, and advertising executive-turned-author who is perhaps best know for his book years ago on the marketing concept of positioning, has taken lately to writing a series of books about ‘The 22 Immutable Laws' of anything. The latest is about branding, and in an interview, he offers a very telling remark that indicates the shortcoming of applying the concept of branding to high-tech marketing: "You can't pick up 10 computer chips and tell me you can see the difference. You can't physically evaluate them, and therefore you trust the brand."

This remark not only shows you the origin of branding, but also indicates the significant shortcomings of the basic assumptions of the branding concept - such as the assumption that the buyer cannot readily obtain comparison information. Can't evaluate computer chips? Come on - in using the term ‘CPU performance' as a search term on Alta Vista, more than 3300 web pages were returned. The first few were showing head-to-head comparisons of Intel, AMD, Cyrix, etc. "Trust the brand" ? - only if you don't know how to perform basic buying research and use a search engine. Obviously, Al Ries has never heard of the Internet, or doesn't know how to use it.

The concept of branding, as previously mentioned, comes from the consumer marketing arena. The idea is that when a consumer has to make a purchase, your ‘brand' is foremost in their mind, to the exclusion of others, and they purchase your goods or services without comparison. Fine in theory, but there are a few limitations. Most notably, that the purchase is heavily influenced by emotion, there is relatively little risk (e.g. beer, detergent, cereal) involved in the decision, third-party comparison information is hard to come by (alluded to by Ries' remark), and the characteristics of the product/service and market are relatively stagnant (e.g., don't change much, such as hamburgers.)

Once you realize the underpinnings of the theory of branding, you begin to realize why many aspects of the concept don't effectively translate to technology (even consumer technology). Hence, even Dell Computer and Microsoft have problems influencing buying decisions with ‘branding', no matter how many millions, or billions, they throw at the concept.

For example, one of the constants in high-tech (especially computer arena) is change and innovations in technology, which happen with ever-increasing velocity. Your purchase decision, even with the best of research, is only valid the moment you make it. Key assumptions made during this buying cycle will be out of date by the next buying cycle - even if it is only tomorrow. The expression "Nobody ever lost their job by specifying IBM" belongs in the 1950's.

Does that mean the concept of ‘branding' is worthless to the high-tech marketer? Not really, if you understand the limitations of the concept. But it is nowhere near as powerful as its supporters would suggest (it is simply another marketing tool), and the length of time you have employ it to influence a potential buyer is far shorter than is commonly suggested.

The usual concept of branding suggests that you maintain buyer ‘mindshare' in between buying cycles, or prior to a buying cycle. That, on the face of it, is a tremendous leap of faith. How many of us maintain awareness of product or service characteristics if we are not in the buying cycle, as opposed to fine-tuning our radar once we decide to begin the buying process? This is one of the counter-productive aspects of conventional ‘branding' strategies: the message is so diluted by excessive use or clever ‘creative' messages designed to pound through our non-buying information filters that once a buyer begins to look at the purchase, much of the information is regarded as too simplistic, misleading, or simply tuned out as irrelevant - possibly losing the buyer and the sale.