The consumer technology industry is unusual for a variety of reasons. For example, as power, speed and features keep increasing, the prices of electronic items keep going down, year after year. In which other industry does that happen?
Imaging by Manoj Madhavan / Mint
Then there’s the fetish factor, which reached new heights on that summer day in 2007 when the iPhone came out. You’ve never seen 1,000 people camping out to be the first in line to buy, say, a new flavour of Cheerios or the latest Gap jeans.
But perhaps the most fascinating aspect of consumer tech is how it’s marketed. Apart from cellphones, you hardly ever see or hear electronics advertised on the mainstream broadcast airwaves. Can you remember seeing any TV ad for an answering machine, a camcorder or a surround-sound system? Can you hum the radio jingle for even one Blu-ray DVD player?
No, most high-tech marketing takes cheaper and more subtle forms: magazine ads (usually terrible ones), trade shows and websites. Some companies, notably Apple, unveil new products at live, Webcast, onstage events—and get extra mileage from the intense secrecy that leads up to them.
What may be most interesting about all of this is what the marketing actually says. Obviously, no company is going to proclaim the shortcomings of its products. But sometimes the features that they do flog are so far away from what really matters, it’s almost laughable. It’s a sort of corporate misdirection, and it’s time somebody called their bluff.
Here, for your mass uprising pleasure, is a cheat sheet. It identifies the usual pitch of the marketing in each tech product category—and contrasts it with a much more important feature, in each case, that the advertisers conveniently avoid mentioning.
CAMCORDERS
What you’re told is important: Zoom power. Good heavens, people—why is zoom so important? Sure, it’s nice to get visually close to your child on the middle-school stage or the soccer field. But how much is enough? 20X? 30X? 50X?
Truth is, the more you zoom in, the unsteadier your footage becomes; each magnification also magnifies your hand jitters and renders the video less watchable.
When have you ever seen zooming-in TV or movie footage? Almost never. Take a hint from the pros: Don’t zoom.
What’s really important: Wide angle. I recently tested camcorders from three major companies. I wanted to see how far back I’d have to stand in order to fit an entire 6ft person in the frame. Believe it or not, the best of the camcorders—the one with the widest angle —required me to back up 15ft. Trouble is, by the time you’ve backed up that far, you’re much too far away from your subject for the microphone to pick him up.
Think of all the times when you ache for a wider view on your camcorder. That stage play, that soccer game, those weddings. You can’t capture anything close to that breathtaking mountain vista with a camcorder unless you lamely pan back and forth; the result doesn’t have anything close to the impact you get in person.