As a former publicist, I carry an equal appreciation and disdain for the PR professionals who keep my phone ringing and inbox full every day. Since venturing to the other side (editorial, that is) I've discovered a solid handful of really smart publicists who have a deep understanding of the companies they represent as well as the magazine theyre pitching (they realize that no, we're not a tech magazine and we won't run executive announcements about their new VP of Marketing).
Then there are those other poor souls who still haven't figured it out. They write the informationless press releases, the superfluous ones, the jargon saturated ones, and the self-important ones. Then there's an entirely different genre: the press release that makes absolutely no sense.
Take Seagate Technology. "Sometimes it pays to simplify things," they state in the press release they sent me today. That's why they've rebranded their disk drive architecture as Seagate NL35 Series 7200.1 500GB FC (the further you read, the more absurd it gets). Of course - that makes perfect sense!
Was there anyone at Seagate who possibly thought this was a nonsensical announcement? Did they all buy into a bad idea, or was it that no one had the courage to go against the grain and put the kibosh on it? I'm still trying to figure it out:
New Product Naming System Protects Brand, Communicates Seagate Value
In a world where multiple brands are competing for increasingly smaller slices of attention, sometimes it pays to simplify things. Disc drive maker Seagate Technology, for example, is adopting a new product-naming system to better communicate the companys value proposition to customers, the media and other stakeholders.
Seagate, the world's largest disc drive manufacturer, hopes its new naming convention will drive sales and build its brand equity. This new architecture emphasizes the Seagate brand first, with supporting product-descriptive information.
An alphanumeric structure for its OEM (original-equipment manufacturer) products, for example, is aimed at driving brand consistency for Seagate and creating a faster and easier way to identify its products. Here is one example of the new naming system for OEM customers.
Seagate NL35 Series 7200.1 500GB FC
The name breaks down as follows:
NL: Specific target application (near-line servers).
35: A 3.5-inch form factor.
7200.1: The drives spin speed and product generation.
500GB: The drives storage capacity.
FC: The drives data interface (Fibre Channel).
"It's important that we protect the investments we've made in our brand," says Brian Dexheimer, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Seagate. "Our brand is one of the most valuable assets we have as a company. At the same time, we must do a better job articulating the many benefits and features of our products."
This is particularly important as Seagate expands its presence in consumer electronics and retail markets, where quality, reliability and innovation are essential attributes for long-term success. Although Seagate has a number of legacy products that will continue, such as "Cheetah," "Barracuda," and "Momentus," all new products will follow this approach.
"Since our strategy is to be a technology leader through vertical integration, building our brand, with the associated improvements in awareness and preference, is critical to our long-term success" says Jeff Loebbaka, vice president of marketing at Seagate. "Everything we do should reinforce Seagate' and it doesn't make sense to spend time and money on product names that don't add value to our customers. Simplicity and clarity carry far more weight with them."
Seagate's product-naming system meets these requirements, says Nick Wreden, a brand expert and author of "FusionBranding: How to Forge Your Brand for the Future."
"It's much easier to remember and refer brands whose names provide a shorthand description of capabilities, benefits or emotional appeal," says Wreden.
Related Stories: | Topics:Management, advertising + PR, Seagate Technology Inc., Computer and Peripheral Equipment Manufacturing, Information Technology Sector, Manufacturing Sector, Technology Sector |
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Recent Comments | 5 Total
June 23, 2004 at 7:49pm by Here4You
As a fellow PR professional who also serves the storage industry, this post hits particularly close to home. I'm familiar with the hard drive market and the difficult task in communicating a very complex technology to a mass market audience. I see two points being made here - the value of the press release in today's rapid-fire, instant-news society and PR's responsibility to the audience - not the idea. I'm not ready to tackle the topic of modern day press release value? What I can say is that our firm often recommends that "non-news" releases - those without a hard news peg - are posted directly to the company website in lieu of being sent over the wire and pushed to media and analyst targets. We may avoid this trap altogether if we focus on the second point - the audience. If PR does its job correctly, only the right news will be sent to the right folks. From what I can see - Fast Co probably wasn't the best place for this release. On the other hand, OEM, channel and distribution-focused publications might see some value. With a strict focus on the audience we can help weed out the fluff ideas and announcements - and we must do this as a collective group to make it work.
June 24, 2004 at 3:58am by gg
Absolutely. The target audience is clearly distribution parterns and EDP folk / hardware buyers. Target publications should've been chosen accordingly. PR could take a leaf from direct marketers who are learning to target their messages rather than "carpet bombing" everyone.
Also, the attention grabber at the start comes across as irritating. Is it too glib or cliched, or maybe sounds patronizing?
The naming convention itself, IMHO, is a good idea. It should make spotting relevant Seagate products quick and easy.
Still, considering that the target audience is a tech-savvy one, they could've cut down all that self-congratulatory rambling at the end. Let people make up their own minds about the idea, thank you very much!
June 24, 2004 at 10:24am by Walt Kania
Okay, as delivered, it was clearly a news-free release.
What puzzles me, though, is why they didn't simply position this as an aid to customers: "This new numbering scheme will make things easier for our customers. They'll be able to tell, at a glance, the key features and capacities of each model."
Why all the high-sounding talk about driving sales and protecting brand equity and communicating value props? Sounds like someone upstairs dictating to the PR team, if you asked me.
June 24, 2004 at 11:57am by Rayne
Sorry. Doesn't work for me.
As a former IT provisioner responsible for maintaining an IT warehouse stocked with thousands of drives, it might help inventory processes. But it doesn't help much when one has to pull a single drive for an emergency hardware replacement. Cheetah: one word, short and sweet. The tech says "Throw me a Cheetah" and presto, yank one off the shelf and make the end user happy in a hurry, inside the service level agreement and the user's expectations; the alternative is flailing away through that alphanumeric mess to pull the right drive. (Been there, done that, ugly...)
Could be faster and easier to pull a Western Digital Raptor...
There's got to be a better way to position the products for ease of use, let alone for preservation of brand. Hope Seagate catches the Cluetrain on this one; customers arent's served by improved branding.
June 25, 2004 at 10:49pm by Tan Yong
re: the post above, I think "Throw me a Cheetah" is exactly the issue Seagate is trying to improve upon. If you just pick "any Cheetah," you could end up with last generation's 36GB 10,000RPM SCSI Cheetah, when what the customer really needed was the newest-generation 15,000-RPM 73GB Fibre Channel Cheetah. Now you have not a happy customer. So the new details in the names will improve that.
In the case where you are speaking in shorthand, by the abbreviated brand name, nothing changes anyway. In the example given (and mocked) above, in fact anybody will just say "get me that NL35 off the shelf please." They obviously would not say "get me that Seagate NL35 Series 7200.1 500GB FC off the shelf please." I am sure Seagate is not suggesting they should. But the details of the name are now available to make it clear what generation, what interface, what capacity, what spin speed the customer needs.
The biggest problem mentioned by Danielle Sacks above, I think, is that this is not very good "positioning" for a press release. And that there's nothing newsworthy here.
Well, the good news is -- *this is not a press release*. I got this email too. This is a direct communication from Seagate to customers only. Just check Seagate's web site and the news wires. It's not there. Danielle must be on their customer email list.
-- CK