I may live in the D.C. but I'm still just a lower echelon gadget blogger, not a high powered politico or brand consultant. I can tell you that 'ready' is not a winning brand strategy.
The American people are sick of a long list of things -- somewhere on that list is 'ready'. My sources tell me that ready.gov, a disaster preparedness site run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, had over three dozen interested visitors last year -- but not many more than that. We had years of 'shovel ready'. In the trenches of consumer electronics, we dealt with 'HD Ready', 'Ready for Vista', and '3D Ready'.
For millions of consumers, ready now means something only in newspeak. A product that announces its readiness may really be saying "I would have included that technology but something went irretrievably wrong on my way to market. My manufacturer needs to sell something now and you're obviously looking to buy. If we can pretend that I'm not obsolete then you can take me home today." I just e-wasted a printer that was Wi-Fi ready. Its readiness? An ethernet port.
I think marketers now know that ready is over. The present boom in smart TVs skipped a boomlet in 'Smart Ready' TVs. As far as I can tell, a Smart Ready TV would have been essentially any other TV.
Back to Hillary. In our newspeak, the RFH campaign is really saying that they meant to be fully Hillary 2.0 Compliant but it somehow all went off the rails just as the stickers were going to press. Ready just doesn't convey a sense of readiness anymore.
As a consumer advocate, I would stay away from Hillary Ready products and wait for genuine Hillary On Board items. None were on the floor at CES this year, but I'm looking forward to some as early as the first quarter of this year. I'm hoping that H.O.B. 2.0 will pick a wireless charging standard as a running mate and finally bring some clarity to the situation. I'll bring you a complete analysis as soon as I get a review unit.
No comments:
Post a Comment