After reading the round up of the various presentations and announcements at CES and
MacWorld, it seems that once again the technology community has delivered the
hottest new innovations brilliantly – without stopping to figure out whether
anyone will actually want to use (much less pay for) them. Dean Takahashi of the Mercury News reported
that Microsoft and Intel are spending “billions of dollars” this year to
educate consumers on these new products. Ironic isn’t it? They’re spending
all that money just to tell me what I want.
Okay, call
me crazy, but I think I know what I want and when I want it. If Microsoft, Intel and the gang would spend
a fraction of their advertising budgets on actually listening to customers they
might design products that don’t require explanation … or even demand
creation. At last count, Technorati is
tracking more than 25m blogs – that’s 1 for every 4 households in America. I bet that somewhere, someone is blogging
about what they want in video-on-demand. There are probably podcasts of clever ideas for new Internet video products
being swapped as I type. You get the
idea.
Consumer generated media offers opportunities for real-time insights into what users are doing, saying, ranting
and dreaming about on any given topic. Marketers both large and small can benefit from learning how to listen
to these conversations.
Let’s give
consumers credit for a little intelligence. In fact, let’s stop thinking about them as consumers and instead engage
them as partners in the product design and marketing process. If you want to follow the money, you should let
your partners take the lead.
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