taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (01/09/87)
Without comment from the DEC VOGON News Service, Number 1233:
Advertising - Shipping ads on floppies
Later this month, Buick will run magazine ads encouraging consumers to write
in for a copy of its 1987 sales brochure. But not just anyone will qualify for
one, and it will hardly be your run-of-the-mill catalog. What the General
Motors division plans to do is mail 20,000 floppy disks to users of Apple
personal computers. The strategy: create a high-tech image for Buick while
also making car shopping easier and more fun. When people pop the software
into a computer, the screen will light up with animated drawings of pistons
and crankshafts chugging away and shock absorbers bouncing up and down. By
pressing a few buttons, computer users can load the trunk with luggage and
place stick-figure drawings of Mom, Dad, Junior and the family dog into the
car's seats. Getting down to more serious business, they will be able to
compare the standard equipment and mileage of a Buick with such competitive
makes as Nissan and BMW, and calculate their monthly payments for different
Buick models.
{The Wall Street Journal, 8-Jan-87, p. 19}taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (01/12/87)
This article is from aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt) and was received on Sun Jan 11 14:01:32 1987 > [what Buick] plans to do is mail 20,000 floppy disks to users of Apple > personal computers. GM already did this with Chevy. The prices were out of date, not all options were listed, it was sloooooow (in basic), the graphics were really pathetic. It had a stupid game (try to maneuver your car to the dealer-ship by bouncing it off obstacles dropped in your path; using essentially text graphics only). As I recall it didn't have any specs at all. It also ran on IBM PCs in addition to Apples (though it didn't run well on a near PC clone). I managed to get it to bomb somehow too. I thought the idea was novel, and worth doing, yet it was done so poorly it was almost negative advertising in my eyes. It had the looks of having been done by a stereotypical teeny-bobber hacker. Ford did a similar thing, but it was only a hype-floppy for its Merkur car. It had comparisons with other cars, but of course carefully omitted any ratings in which it didn't fare well. Yet it was only for one car, hence it wasn't very useful overall. Just a computerized sales brochure. I really doubt it caused anyone to buy this car. If computers are to be well accepted in society they need to be presented as well-conceived and executed tools, not juvenile and error prone jokes. Andrew Burt isis!aburt / aburt@isis.cs.du.edu
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (01/13/87)
This article is from Robert Montante <bobmon%iuvax.cs.indiana.edu@RELAY.CS.NET>
and was received on Sun Jan 11 20:39:32 1987
Last year Ford offered advertising disks for PCs in Byte or somewhere. It was
fairly dry text and elementary graphics, interesting more in its existence than
in its content. But hey, it was a free disk... I just sent in the response
card offering this year's disk, now in Apple, C-64 and {something else}
formats as well.
RAMontante
[here we have a true example of the result of hi-tech marketing - "it was a
free disk"...quite reminiscent of when people would accept political fliers
so they would have some paper to start a fire with... --- Dave]taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (01/13/87)
This article is from well!mandel (Tom Mandel) and was received on Mon Jan 12 14:38:53 1987 This [the disk being offered by Buick] is a nice of example of why General Motors is in such trouble as a company. Provide useless but cute information to computer users, and think that they'll be fooled that this is a genuine comparison of the quality of Buicks versus competitive makes (Nissan and BMW). The really ironic element of such a strategy is that personal computer users may be more likely (than other potential buyers) to want *real* rather than ephemeral information about the desirability of Buicks.
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (01/13/87)
This article is from rutgers!allegra!packard!drew (RD Davis) and was received on Mon Jan 12 16:01:00 1987 You posted an item that reports that GM is going to send out Buick ads on Apple-compatible floppies. A month or 2 ago I received an IBM-PC-compatible floppy from Ford that sounded similar in spirit to what your posting described. It held my attention for somewhat longer than a print ad, but I think this was primarily because I hadn't ever received such an ad before. I can't say that I saw anything in it that made wonderful use of the PC as opposed to just a print ad. Close as it got to being "useful" was I think it let you select options and generate a "sticker" for just the version you wanted of whatever- the-heck-the-model-was. I suppose if it was a truly great ad I'd remember what the model was. It did let you select among comparisons of the Ford vs. certain Japanese imports or of the Ford vs. certain European imports. The sticker price of everything involved was far more than I plan on spending so perhaps I was a poorly choosen recipient for the disk. R. Drew Davis
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (02/08/87)
Apropos the advertising by Buick, etc., distributed on floppy disk: Something
that may be closer to the hearts and wallets of this community than new-car
marketing (;-) is new-job marketing : I don't know how much-used this trick
is elsewhere but in UK I saw it for the first time a few months back, when
a huge drop of PC floppies was issued . I guess that the mailing list included
all attendants at various conferences, exhibitions, ... ( several people on
our location received it.)
The floppy came with a glossy mini-brochure describing how nice it would be
to work for the UK subsidiary of a Great Big Bank, and how lucrative it
would be. No details of the jobs printed in the brochure at all. A good
trick, and one can see the image-motivation ("if you're the sort of person
for us, then obviously you have access to a PC") but I don't know whether
it paid off. The effect here was rather like a blue movie looking for a
projector ("psst! seen this? know what it's all about?" ... ) and I think
that eventually some hardcopies of screen dumps found their way into
"circulation". Certainly the issuers made an impact and got their name into
people's consciousnesses but I don't know whether they actually filled
their jobslots any more effectively.
Vic Churchill (jvc@stl ...!mcvax!ukc!stl!jvc +44-279-29531 x 2546)