Gadgets, girls and how to blow R100k
by Andrew Smith on 22/11/07 at 8:55 am
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Yesterday Shane and I were invited to witness a mating ritual. It’s a typical male show-off thing – the rich guy takes out the popular, influential girl to a fancy dinner and hopes to win her favour.
In this case the guy was HTC (the cellphone company), the setting was a plush Camps Bay house, and the girl was a handful of journalists. We were wined (a steady stream of colourful drinks) and dined (oysters, shrimp and chicken skewers) while being told the merits of the new HTC Shift that hits our shores in January.
The problem is, I’m not sure how to play this game. Perhaps they teach “real journalists” the rules at Varsity, and us bloggers are left to figure it out for ourselves. If they feed me oysters and cocktails, do I have to say nice things about them? If I don’t write anything (or worse, write what I really think), will I ever be invited again?
Oh well, if this post blows my reputation with PR companies and event organisers, I’ll have to start a new blog under a pseudonym…
The 10 journalists (and Shane and I) watched the HTC representatives try their utmost to convince us that the Shift is “revolutionary” because it’s more powerful than a mobile phone, but not as powerful as a full laptop. Mmmmm. Except that it’s not really a phone, because you can’t make phonecalls on it (but you can check e-mail and SMS), so you’ll have to carry a normal phone as well. Ok. So basically it’s a small laptop. In case I’m missing something, read some real reviews here and here.
In all seriousness, I do think that some executives who travel all the time and only really use a computer for communicating might find value in a Shift for around R13,000. I don’t think many Ideate readers fall into that category, so I won’t say more about the phone (sorry, the “UPMC”), but I would like to say a bit more about product launches. As small business people, we don’t have massive budgets to stage glitzy events, and my suggestion is that we shouldn’t try to. The way my simple mind sees it, if you host a journalist in a fancy house and give him fancy food, you’re trying to associate that style and quality with the product you’re trying to launch, and effectively gloss over any inadequacies in your offering. If you take this route, you’ve got to make sure that you do a damn good job. For example, the bus driver who drove us from the Convention Centre to Camps Bay hooted and shouted at cars that got in our way, and that is now also associated with HTC for me. It’s tough to pull off a flawless event, but if you play that game you’ve got to go the whole hog.
However, I presume you’re involved in small business because you believe so passionately in your widget/service that you’ve risked your house and the financial security of your great-grandkids in order to get your company off the ground. In that case, you don’t need a glitzy event, because your widget/service speaks for itself. Invest your time and money getting your widget into the hands of people who will use it and talk about it, provide great support, and the rest will follow. I heard Jon Cherry call this “seeding” today, and he can help you implement it if you give him a shout.
But then again, perhaps if they had served caviar…
Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew Smith.
