The awesome design made by Alienware

I received an email from dell's subscription and I have to admit that it's a really catchy advertisement that totally illustrated the qualities and values of this awesome gaming laptop - Alienware M11X. This is becoming more common as a mean for advertisement or promotion channel since emails are widely used among its primary target audience who are teenage gamers. The 3D image that comes out of the screen in this ads conveys the idea of a realistic and high quality LED screen that will provide the user a wonderful gaming or video watching experience.

Alienware is a sub-brand under DELL which is 1 of the biggest 5 computer manufacturers in the world. Dell's conventional laptops are deemed to be mid-class products which are priced reasonably given their hardware specifications. So my guess is that Alienware is created to differentiate and get a clearer and new positioning in the laptop market. Dell doesn't want consumers to mix up the alienware series with its other product categories.

It allows for more than 10+ personalization in hardwares and exterior designs, including a variety of colours of 6 choices for LED back-light keyboards alone. This is really impressive and it really adds value to its product.

The service for carving a personalized name onto the laptop generates even more perceived value as each laptop will be deemed as a unique product with all such personalized customizations.

Alienware is successful in the sense that its name alone already presents the idea of futuristic and high performance laptop to the consumers. All the ads it used for promotion use a mysterious but high-tech "Alien-related" theme which is easily recognized and differentiated from other conventional laptops.

Not only with the hardwares and appearance, Alienware has come up with its own theme for window OS which is actually another priced software product under dell. So it now comes together with the laptop in a bundle.

All of the above reasons contribute the sustainable competitive advantage and the success of this really impressive series.

A rival for iPad

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/27/rim-introduces-playbook-the-blackberry-tablet/

This is an external marketing site which consistently reviews new and highly anticipated products.

It is interesting to note that one of the PlayBook's (a close substitute of iPad made by BlackBerry) selling point is that it fully supports Flash which is an adobe software that are extremely widely used for internet programs.

There are many rumors going around on why Apple refuses Flash. One of the most credible one is that adobe causes many loopholes in iphone's/iPad's OS which actually leaded to the possibility of being backdoored by hackers that unlock the full accessibility of the phone namely "jailbreaking". Even though many apple users complained about the inconvenience brought by the lack of Flash, Apple still persists on its rejection for Flash.

While this eventually creates opportunity for other competitors such as the PlayBook.

PlayBook was only released after iPad, so the marketers for PlayBook has to erode the existing competitive advantages that iPad is holding. Multitasking was available for iPad since its very first release, but nonetheless, it's still not up to the standard as compared to our computers. PlayBook actually performed better in multitasking.

The 8.9 inches screen for iPad is deemed too large in the sense that it's almost the size of usual netbook. Playbook decided to make its screen smaller and more portable.

It also further adds values by providing dual HD camera that supports 1080p HD video recording and 1080p HD videos playback. All of which iPad is capable of performing.

Playbook made sure that all iPad's sustainable competitive advantages are more or less eroded by its superior hardware specifications and softwares. Then will it be possible for Playbook to make an impact on iPad's market share.

It is clear cut that apple's brand loyalty is dominating, if playbook can't even beat its foundamental functions, it will stand no chance in winning the war.

Creative Ads Add Value

Many of us have come across really interesting and impressive advertisements all around the world. We can easily recall vividly how each advertisement actually captured our attention among thousands of other ads.

Many marketing strategies focus on conveying the value of the products to the consumers. However, really creative advertisements add value by leaving a huge impression, be it bad or good on the consumers, at least it makes its brand or intended idea deeply rooted in one's mind.

Creative ads will also cause people to circulate them all over the internet or by mouth. Thus, they have to stand out among the others in order to success.

Here are some of the interesting ads:

A message on the harms of smoking

Another great job done by NIKE. A straightfoward and catchy picture that fully translates its slogan.

Impressive method of marketing!

No comment on this one.....

The war for laptops......

I have some thoughts after reading my housemate's post about the competitionfor "Mr laptop".

Jason's Post

I am sorry for posting a series of computer related stuffs but that's the area I am really interested and I believe that I can make better comments and insights about the existing marketing phenomena in this industry.

Jason listed 3 middle class laptops(Vaio E series which I have mentioned earlier in my blog, the mac book pro and the new dell XPS series) which includes rather similar prices which deviates at most 200 dollars.

The macbook pro is probably well known to every single student. It's still deemed as a luxurious product under Apple even though its price has dropped tremeduously from around 3000 to 1299. The highly positive brand impression it has created is its most appreciated value by its consumers. Just as what I have mentioned in the previous post, Mac book is inferior in every aspects of its hardware specification other than its Operating system and battery life. MacBook Air is well known for its portability, but there are still many substitutes available such as sony's X13 series which is also amazingly designed and highly portable as shown below:

I keep on wondering what really contributes to success of Apple's productions. No matter what it launches, it will be destined to be a craze or a fasion for the year.
I was rather surprised by the amount of Apple users in north americans. Apple is indeed deemed as a "cool" brand in South East Aisa as well as eastern Asia(China Korea Japan etc). However, the asians are not as crazy over the apple products as the western people. The cultural difference made Apple not as competitive in many Asian countries. Most of the Asian countries are still considered as "Developing Nations", so the prices of apple products actually take up a fairly big portion of their income. This makes the demand for its products elastic. It's impossible to target the consumers in Asia that most of whom stick to the rule of "good value-to-price ratio" strategy when making a purchasing decision. They perceived the extra value of better "self-esteem" when using the products to be ridiculous when such intangible features might actually cost them half a year's salary.

In this case, I believe in short-term, apple will never be able to capture those low-end markets especially in the developing nations. That actually makes the other laptop or electronic device producers to be able to find many segments which Apple isn't able to penetrate.