Re: Marketing can work sometimes.
: Marketing can help sometimes, to be fair.
: Companies like Rolex have benefited
: tremendously. However, as crudely done as
: some Rolex movements may be (the old Walt
: Odets review of the ExpII comes to mind) the
: fact is that those watches generally run,
: run well, and run well into the next two
: decades, no questions asked (with apologies
: to new-era in-house early Daytona
: adopters...). OTOH other firms, such as
: Bose, have relied solely on brilliant
: marketing and are also making a killig
: without necessarilly being the best in their
: segment. Weird, how the mind works.
It is true that good marketing can work well at selling products. Starbucks is a good example. They have positioned themselves as the Rolex of the coffee world. When do you ever see a Starbucks commercial on TV? Never. Why? Because they don't have to advertise. Brand recognition is all they need to sell their lattes, and they've achieved that.
What Georges was saying is that the best marketed product is not necessarily the BEST PRODUCT. I agree with this. I've been to a lot of local coffee shops that could blow Starbucks out of the water. With Omega, focusing on marketing their watches to upscale chains may help them to obtain more brand recognition, but it isn't necessarily going to result in a better product. A Planet Ocean is a Planet Ocean, whether it is sold from a local, "mom and pop" business or in a trendy, upscale boutique.
Only time will tell if Omega's new business strategy will actaully work, or if it will come back to haunt them.
