Jim Forbes blogs about how the wireless capabilities of the Intel Centrino 2 chipset should be marketed.
“If I were working in PR today for Intel or one of its portable computer marketing partners, I would have set up tables with new notebooks that incorporate the new technology in a parking lot or field. Each of the tables would also have an older notebook with legacy wireless networking chipsets. And each of the tables would set in front of as range marker listing the distance between it and the WiFi router.
The very visible point of the demonstration is that the new chipsets free notebook users from being close to a WiFi access point.
Now let’s think a minute about Intel’s WiMax WAN technology. Want a fun way to demonstrate it? Set up a test network along Amtrak’s Oakland, CA to Sacramento right of way. Now load up 15 reporters, editors or industry luminaries in several of the cars on a train’s consist ( the term used to describe an engine and cars expressed as a single unit). Let them experience true persistent mobile connectivity, sit back and wait an hour or so for the rave reviews to appear.
Mobile persistent connectivity is a transformational experience for most users.”
Jim and I worked together at PC Week in the mid-80s. He has seen it all when it comes to PC marketing and I think he’s right. Users need to see this stuff in the field to grasp the impact of what we marketers try to embody in the speeds and feeds that characterize “spec pod” marketing.