I received an interesting comment on my recent post about the “overbranding” of Dell. In fact, I thought it made such good points that it deserved to be elevated to a full-blown post.
A warm welcome, if you will, for the Observatory’s first-ever “guest blogger,” Eugene — from I-haven’t-a-clue-where.
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Ken, you’re actually being too kind to the Boys from Round Rock. Dell’s branding dysfunction goes much deeper than the fact that their latest computer actually has a name larger than the computer itself.
Setting aside the sheer quantity of sub-brand names and modifiers in their arsenal, the quality of all them, from a pure naming perspective, is terrible. Not to mention the fact that as a family of sub-brands, they bear no familial resemblance to one another. It’s obvious they were all picked out of thin air, to satisfy a particular need at a particular moment in time, without any sense of overall brand cohesion.
Perhaps Dell’s worst branding offense is what they’ve done recently with their netbook line and soon-to-be-launched smartphone. Instead of opting for one of their wacko made-up names, they’ve dubbed them both “mini.” These are defining products for the mobile internet era we’re in, and they’ve given these products the distinct disadvantage of a completely generic name. Worse yet, a completely generic name already being used by six other products in this category. Let’s see, do I want to buy an Inspiron Mini, a Mini 3 or an Inspiron Zino, which is actually a mini-Inspiron. The choices are endless. And endlessly confusing.
Speaking of choices, I went to dell.com to check out a Zino. It only took me about five minutes to find it, which made me think of the Dell tagline, “Yours is Here.” Yeah, somewhere.
Tags: dell, dell smartphone, inspiron, inspiron mini, inspiron zino, ken segall, mini 3
