If you believe the hype, we all belong to a digital generation
immersed in new technology. or Orange and Apple are trying to sell
us lifestyle brands based on technology that doesn't even exist
yet. Either way, it's convenient for them
When Hans Snook, the founder of Orange, took the stage at the
Institute of Directors (IOD) annual conference in London last year,
his company was facing a crisis. The millions of pounds it had
spent building up its mobile phone brand was looking like a dubious
investment as the number of people buying phones dropped
dramatically.
At that point, most people had started questioning the future of
the mobile phone industry and even asking whether or not Orange
would survive the drop in demand for its phones. The future, as
Snook saw it, was not to continue selling phones in isolation, but
to move into other forms of mobile communication, including
handheld computers and smart homes which could interact with their
owners. That transition, he envisaged, would end with Orange
evolving from a single product company into a manufacturer that
could deliver a lifestyle.
"Orange sees its future as a communications-based life services
company. The Orange brand, already a strong asset and a key
differentiation, will become one of the world's most valuable life
services brands, universally trusted and recognised as
straightforward, honest, dynamic, refreshing and friendly," Snook
stated at the conference.
From product to lifestyle
Orange is not alone in
wanting to deliver lifestyle services. Snook's vision chimed with
many other similar messages being made by the big brands. Even
before Snook took the podium, the expression "digital lifestyle"
had been used by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the annual MacWorld event
in San Francisco to describe the move the computer manufacturer was
making to place its products at the heart of the digital
home.
In his usual crowd-whipping fashion, Jobs told the Mac faithful
they were witnessing the dawn of a new stage in technological
development. Unsurprisingly, the Apple Macintosh computer would be
at the heart of this lifestyle, controlling and storing digital
media, including pictures, video and music.
Jobs was unleashing stage one in a marketing strategy that would be
built around messages informing computer users that Apple products
would provide them with easy access to the fruits of digital
technology, at the same time reminding potential purchasers of
rival brands that only Apple could really deliver the tools to
enjoy the digital lifestyle. Like Orange, Apple was following a
shift away from branding a set of products to branding an
experience.
Like many others, Apple has shifted its marketing approach to focus
on a lifestyle because of pressures to keep users buying the
products and the advertising messages that large computer brands
put out.
The Economist explained the situation in its September 2001
branding feature, Who's wearing the trousers? "In the new global
economy, brands represent a huge proportion of the value of a
company and, increasingly, its biggest source of profits. So
companies are switching from producing products to marketing
aspirations, images and lifestyles," it reported.
Thinking differently
But studying the development of
Apple's digital lifestyle campaign provides clear illustrations of
the weaknesses in the lifestyle branding approach. The story begins
by returning to Steve Jobs in front of a podium in San Francisco in
January 2001.
Apple, unlike all the other computer companies, with possibly the
slight exception of IBM, is in the unique position of having a
brand that is already loaded with connotations that make it
different from its competitors.
The long-running advertising campaign "Think Different" encouraged
consumers to embrace the difference and choose the Macintosh path.
But being different was not always the most successful marketing
strategy. In the 90s, a series of chief executives came and went
after failing to get Apple's share of the worldwide computer market
into double figures.
Then the prodigal son returned. Jobs had been a founder of the
company but left to pursue other interests. After a series of
cutbacks, the highly designed and colourful iMac rolled off the
production lines and managed to place Apple back in the spotlight.
Jobs re-established the marketing image that Apple was able to
offer something different and aimed to provide consumers with a
better technology experience.
Cream of the crop
Last year, he started to talk about
the digital era and argued convincingly that Apple could provide
the tools to reap the benefits of digital music, pictures and video
because it developed all of its own software and hardware. Apple
commentators immediately picked up the argument and within days of
giving the keynote speech, Jobs was getting positive feedback from
analysts and commentators he could only have dreamed of.
"Apple is uniquely situated to deliver on the digital lifestyle era
in ways Dell, Gateway, Compaq and IBM can only dream of,"
proclaimed Bob LeVitus in his Mac column in the Houston Chronicle.
"That's because Apple controls the entire process, from top to
bottom. Apple makes its own operating systems; the others don't.
Apple bundles user-friendly software to manage your digital media;
the others don't. Apple bundles recording hard-ware and ensures
that it works flawlessly with its software; the others - well,
let's just say that in a few months they'll be saying theirs 'works
as good as a Mac'."
On the Lowendmac.com Web site, Stephan Van Esch commented: "Using a
Mac can only enhance the digital lifestyle. [And] Apple is poised
to take advantage of this new lifestyle."
The waiting game
Jobs carefully constructed the idea
that the digital lifestyle was not just a marketing concept he had
thought up but was really happening independent of Apple. But like
the Orange wireless mobile communications lifestyle, the major
problem is that it does not exist yet.
Consumers are being asked to buy into a world which is often just
held together by a couple of products, nothing more. For the
foreseeable future, technology products will tend to operate in
isolation and the idea of linking different products together to
produce a seamless user experience is still fraught with
confusion.
"The digital lifestyle will only take off when existing products
start to co-exist," says Matt Oldfield, QXL.com computer categories
manager. "While companies can still continue to sell different
products to maximise sales, they will. Digital lifestyle is a
certainty, but only when the buying population starts to demand it.
At present, it is purely a marketing exercise with very limited
desire."
Don't believe the hype
Despite those problems, the
marketing machine is in full swing. Far from dropping the digital
lifestyle theme, companies have picked up on it. Each has attempted
to make sure the idea becomes their own by labelling the phenomenon
differently and co-branding products and services to match their
own lifestyle brand, causing yet more consumer confusion.
WorldCom, a communications specialist, has dreamt up the phrase
"generation-d". The 'd' stands for digital, but because the company
claims anyone can participate in the digital lifestyle it has to
offer, the 'generational' concept seems redundant.
"We are all part of generations which have grown up in this
[Internet] world," says a spokesperson at WorldCom. "For one group,
the reality of a digital way of doing business and living life is a
given; it is just there and has to be adopted. For others, the
wonder of a new environment has created enthusiasm and
drive."
WorldCom describes its generation-d programme as pivotal to its
future: "Generation-d is central to WorldCom's business strategy to
reinforce its position in the market as the leading data and
Internet provider," says its mission statement. "We are all
generation-d: It's not about age; it's an attitude that says
anything is possible. It's not about technology, but what it allows
us to do."
Unfortunately, most of that is untrue. The digital lifestyle idea
is not open to all. It is about age and has everything to do with
the ability to purchase, control and exploit technology. Those
consumers that cannot afford to buy the products and services
simply will not be able to take part in the digital lifestyle. The
suspicion about the digital lifestyle is that it has been developed
with only a minority of people in mind - white American computer
literates in their mid-teens to mid-thirties.
A design for life
At Comdex in Las Vegas last year, one
of the discussion panels tackled the subject of the digital
lifestyle and attempted to pinpoint the brands driving it and where
it was heading.
Meeting against the backdrop of consumerist excess, the panel took
the following position as their starting point: "Digital technology
is moving beyond the world of personal computers and will soon
touch just about every aspect of our lifestyle. Music, television,
entertainment, the arts, interconnected home appliances - all are
experiencing the vibrant and disruptive impact of digital
technology."
Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, chaired the debate
and is honest about how limited the digital lifestyle is. "It is
defined as a lifestyle in which a person has a lot of digital
devices that they use in their life and the PC ties them all
together," he says. "It should be a universal experience as the
world moves from analogue to digital, but its first real impact is
with early adopters in the major developed countries."
Bajarin agrees that the lifestyle promises are being oversold by
the technology manufacturers. "Initially, it is more of a marketing
mantra, but truth be told, it will eventually become part of the
fabric of all lifestyles where digital technology has been
integrated into education, information and entertainment."
Losing brand power
Establishing that the digital
lifestyle is at best a few years away and could even fail to
materialise in the way Apple markets it demonstrates the weakness
of the lifestyle branding approach. Fail to get it right and
consumers will reject the marketing, damaging the brand as future
promises are unlikely to be believed. More now than ever before,
consumers are calling the shots and are not easily manipulated by
brands.
"Brands are not as powerful as their opponents allege, nor is the
public as easily manipulated," claims The Economist. "Many of the
established brands that top the league tables are in trouble,
losing customer loyalty and value. Annual tables of the world's top
ten brands used to change very little. Names such as Kellogg's,
Kodak, Marlboro and Nescafe appeared with almost monotonous
regularity. Now, none of these names are in the top ten. Of the 74
brands that appear in the top 100 rankings in the past two years,
41 declined in value between 2000 and 2001."
As we all wait with bated breath to see exactly what Steve Jobs
says in this year's keynote speech, users will still be waiting to
find out when the digital lifestyle is really going to arrive
Further information
Apple:
www.apple.co.ukOrange:
www.orange.comQXL:
www.QXL.comWorldcom:
www.worldcom.com