After reading some of the tech coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show happening in Las Vegas this week, one thing stood out… following is more than a trend in social media. It’s the norm for big tech companies. The reviews of Windows 8, coming sometime soon to a PC near you, has a screen of tiles that you scroll through, “similar to what you find on a smartphone or tablet.” And what launched the initial touchscreen/swiping through icons for navigation trend? An Apple product, the iPhone.

The Tulsa World’s own Robert Evatt interviewed Tara Dunion, senior director of communications of the Consumer Electronics Association, the organizing body of CES, and she told him one of the big trends for product announcements and launches at CES this year is new ultrabooks. Evatt’s article mentioned that tech experts have characterized ultrabooks as similar to the MacBook Air — a product that is as powerful as a traditional laptop yet ultra thin and light.

Full disclosure: I own an iPhone, two iMacs and a MacBookPro. I am definitely an Apple fan. But this post isn’t about praising Apple. Not really. I just wonder where the other innovators are? It’s not enough to have the best iteration of the thing people already know they want… because you’re always going to be spending time and resources on incremental improvements to a known entity and directly competing with every other company out there trying to do the same thing.

Whatever field you’re in… don’t be just a follower. Don’t be the ones out there touting the latest “improvement” to someone else’s product or idea. Spend your time and R&D resources to develop what people need, even if they don’t know they want it yet. Find the problems. Find the pinch points. Figure out a fundamentally better way. Once the product or idea or service begins to take shape, marketing and PR are the tools to help your potential audience see what’s possible, not just what’s passable.

Missing the Mark

I don’t normally rant on this blog… not really my style. But I feel compelled to cry out against the marketing sins of Jim Norton Ford in Tulsa.

Ford is the only American motor vehicle company that posted growth last month. Ford did not take bail-out money and is taking its corporate marketing in a more social, relevant (in my opinion) direction.

(GM results) (Chrysler results) (Ford results)

But one of our local Tulsa Ford dealers… who is running a radio spot featuring a guy with a (bad) British accent. Huh? As the spot closes, the “Brit” says, “And remember, folks; we ain’t Norton (play on “nothin’ “) without you!”

Bloody hell… no self-respecting Brit would ever utter that phrase. EVER.

Sometimes I feel like we (marketers who blog) spend too much time preaching the basics, and then something like this bit of “marketing” comes along and I realize, anew, that the basics just aren’t that basic.

What happened to knowing your market? Knowing what motivates them? Knowing why they buy, and more specifically, why they might buy from you? How did “let’s just use some guy with a British accent!” become the answer to why people in Tulsa, Oklahoma would choose a Ford?

I do not know if an agency was paid to produce this, but I hope not. And please, don’t tell me how it worked because I remember it… I remember and write about really good and really bad marketing because it’s what I do for a living, not because being bad is a strategy worth emulating.

So what do you think? What are your favorite examples of marketing that misses the mark?

(Photo credit: malavoda on Flikr)