Did you know, asks Carl Howe of Seeking Alpha, that HP introduced 39 new products two weeks ago? The event, held in New Yok, got very little press coverage. Mr Howe thinks it was because HP marketing failed in these ways:
-- mixed consumer with office products.
-- launched too many products at one event.
-- presented a laundry list, instead of a story.
-- lost the goal (buy our new products) in the event (Fashion Week).
In contrast, Apple got 100x more press coverage for the launch of its 4 new products last week, even though HP apparently invited 1,000 media.
Having attended many press events, I understand what HP tried to do: M A K E - A - B I G - S P L A S H. Problem is, the media's minds are merely human, and can absorb only so much.
I've been to software launch events where the vendor paraded all of its software to the assembled crowd. Imagine sitting through a presentation where each of a dozen or more products gets 1-5 minutes of attention -- and you're interested only in maybe 2-3 of them. It becomes a waste of everyone's time.
Another Tip for Presenters
Sometimes these media events take all day, 8 in the morning til 5 at night. Here's a far better plan:
* 12 noon -5pm on day 1.
* 9am - 12noon on day 2.
This splits the presentation into two parts, making it less likely that our eyes begin to droop at that dangerous time around 2pm.
This lets us spend the evening mulling over first batch of presentations, and return refreshed for the next day's batch.
This lets us fly in early on Day 1, and flight out later on Day 2. We spend just one night away from home, instead of two nights (as required by the all-day event).
And, for those of us from the West Coast attending events on the East Coast, that 8am start time is 5am for us -- r-e-a-l-l-y unpleasent.
For the workstation products, most of the target media outlets are small. They sometimes pay expenses for us to attend their events, but not for this one. One more reason for scant coverage.
Posted by: Randall Newton | Sep 10, 2007 at 12:29 PM