Editorials: Zune Advertising Poll
Many of you will notice that over the past five months the site has had nothing but one poll in which to vote. Although we are planning to change that later today I first wanted to release and analyze the first poll ever released by my website.
To say simply that our poll was unscientific is at best an understatement and at worst well, yes it’s still an understatement. Mainly we asked visitors on our home page about their feelings on the new add campaign and they responded. At no time where these results tampered with or manipulated in any way, shape, or form. That being sad we can now move on to our survey results. We asked 25 people how they felt about the way Microsoft has and continues to market the community aspect of the Zune platform, below are the results.
To be clear we are not in anyway claiming that this is the way the Zune community in its entirety feels, however you cannot deny it’s implications. If this indeed is how the community feels then your first have to ask yourself what is Microsoft doing wrong with it’s approach to attracting people to the social? I would think that everyone would have to give them credit for sponsoring a ton of events but in the end does this really promote the community? No it doesn’t. I love the X-Games as much as the next snow boarding, skateboard crazed youth, however at what point does one start to take appreciation for the fact that having bill-boards at these events does nothing to let “you make it you”, neither does it invite anyone to “join the social”.
Then there are the advertisements during television shows. They’re cleverly shot, conceptually brilliant, yet no one ask can ever explain to me what they take away from watching one of the Zune advertisements. “Tina Pink”, (featured below) is one of these. I’ve seen it quite literally dozens of times and I still watch it as if i’m going to have an aha moment. To be honest I don’t consider myself to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, however I interviewed five different people and they couldn’t begin to explain it to me either. Thankfully I believe Microsoft is going to eventually find a sweet spot with their advertising but they are no where that neighborhood quite yet.
Released in November 2007, “Tina Pink” ushered in the new image of Zune. Still cool and hip also artsy.
Of course there’s the devil advocate view. Advertising creates brand awareness, the more people who see billboards of Zune or the Zune logo, the more people will begin to wonder what the social is and decide to ask someone else what the social is or head to Zune.net. I don’t deny this and I don’t think you’ll ever find someone who will tell you brand awareness is something to be ashamed of, however the fact remains how penetrating are bill boards and sponsorships? I don’t have hard evidence, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. Microsoft is holding Zune sales numbers tight to their chests and rightfully so however hopefully they’ll release them soon. If this happens within a reasonable time I can promise you we’ll find out just how effective both “welcome to the social” and “you make it you” have been. Starting tomorrow you’ll find a new batch of surveys. I personally encourage everyone to vote in them in the coming so that we may receive feedback from the Zune community.
