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Dell Turns On The Buzz Saw

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Warnerc2When you turn on a power saw of any type you make some noise and make a mess. Dell certainly did that with the recent video of a supposedly frustrated Tablet PC owner slicing and dicing through his Toshiba M400 Tablet PC. As Rob mentioned, folks are discussing this and some are thinking that Dell went a bit too far and some are welcoming the negative comparative marketing approach. I’m in the latter camp.

First, let me say, Dell has to deliver now. You can’t go slashing another company’s product unless you can live up to the hype. Dell just raised the expectation bar. If they can’t leap over it watch out. That out of the way, I’d love to see a slash and burn approach take off in the Tabletscape and here’s why.

The marketing of Tablet PCs has been extremely poor. That’s no secret. Confused messages, lack of exposure, and general confusion on how to position Tablet PCs and UMPCs have hurt the platform as much as any other aspect throughout the platform’s existence. Heck, all you have to do is to page back through Tablet PC Buzz, GottaBeMobile.com, or any blog by a Tablet PC evangelist and you’ll see almost overwhelming excitement when Microsoft or an OEM actually ran some advertising about Tablet PCs. That’s a pretty sad comment if you ask me. The marketing of Tablet PCs will one day become a case study for how not to market a product. So maybe this will change things. A little “swift-boating” couldn’t hurt an already moribund approach.

If I was Toshiba, I’d have a video answer within a few days. If I were the other Tablet PC OEMs I’d do the same. If that would occur it would only be a boon. Somehow I doubt it will, but I’d love to see it. 

Some say Dell not only has to deliver a product, but their next step is to start delivering some specs. That is correct. But hey, one way or the other, Dell has gotten a lot of folks talking about their new Tablet PC and that is the first step. Now is that going to be a rip-cut or a cross-cut?

 

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