In Xoom Marketing, Was Motorola Advertising for Rival Eee Pad Transformer?

In a case of mistaken identity, Motorola’s tablet evolution ads may be advertising its Xoom as the Eee Pad Transformer. In its early ad campaign on television, Microsoft shows a young businessman folding down a tablet, breaking down the form factor, to fold into the Xoom tablet. Does the Xoom do that in real life? No. But the Asus Eee Pad Transformer does with the optional keyboard dock.

At the Bank of America Merrill Lynch tech summit, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha addressed concerns about his company’s marketing of the initial tablet, and says that more needs to be done to communicate the message more effectively. Jha says that the company could work on “marketing and that we communicate our message and that our brand property is understood” and that “it’s not about spending more money but how to make the dollars go further.”

For those who are more technologically forward, the commercial does serve a purpose–that the Xoom represents the next era in the computing world, in an age of what Steve Jobs coined as ‘post-PC.’ In this world, traditional computing form factors, like the notebook, are broken to allow for a more personalized tablet form factor. However, the marketing had the opposite effect on the mainstream consumers.

For the average consumer who saw the ad, many were heading into their local Best Buy asking for ‘the laptop that transformed into a tablet,’ according to The Droid Guy. So while the Xoom was breaking new boundaries, its advertising was sending customers into stores asking for a product offered by one of its rivals.

Sure, the Xoom is ‘everything a tablet should be,’ to quote Motorola’s marketing words, but the Xoom advertising shows a tablet that is everything that the Asus Eee Pad Transformer is.