Merchandise Spotlight-Computer Catalogs (1,078 words)
Marketing Computers by Catalog
"Prospects want quarter-inch holes, not quarter-inch drills."
—MBA Magazine
I learned to touch type on an old office Remington in the summer of 1954 at Browne's Business School in Rockville Cen-tre, NY. Today, I can operate a computer keyboard—the very same QWERTY keyboard on which I learned to touch type—at somewhere around 60 w.p.m., maybe 70 w.p.m. if I'm fresh. When I interview people for articles, I use a laptop and can ask questions, maintain eye contact with my subject and my fingers fly over the keyboard. I don't use a tape recorder; I don't need one. I have irritated a lot of my interviewees, but none of them has ever accused me of misquoting them.
I do not know a RAM from an MHz or an MB; the terms "DIMM," "Iomega Zip," "UNIX," "3D AGP Graphics," "full speed L2 cache," "ATI RAGE PRO TURBO graphics card" and "DMI 2.0 Compliant" are absolute gibberish to me. I am sneered at by techies, computer salesmen and software manufacturers for being computer illiterate. You know what? I don't care. Recently someone complained that presidential hopeful George W. Bush does not have a hands-on grasp of the issues and the nitty-gritty of policy. One savvy political analyst in his campaign said, "Yeah, well, we don't want to elect mechanics; we want to elect drivers."
Computers by Mail
In going through a month of computer catalogs, I found the majority of them were sent to people at business addresses, with very few going to residences.
MicroWarehouse out of Lakewood, NJ, sends the same catalog to homes and businesses. The effect is like a blazing comic book that screams price, Price, PRICE everywhere, and uses virtually no selling—or benefit-oriented—copy.
Rather, it lists features in techie-talk shorthand that leaves a writer/designer like myself totally out in the cold. Example from Compaq copy:
DESKPRO EP SERIES FEATURES
4 Fast Celeron™ Pentium® II and Pentium® III processors up to 550MHz
4 Compaq Restore CD standard
4 Outstanding Matrox 3D AGP Graphics
4 512K cache standard on all Pentium® models
4 128K full-speed L2 cache on Celeron™ models
4 6 slots/5 bays
4 Windows 95
4 Flexible desktop/
Minitower ATX chassis
What do I know about this computer? I think it comes with Windows 95 and costs "Only $759!" ("Lease it for only $27/Mo!§") I could not find out what the "§" refers to.
The Exception: Dell
What you see on page 36 are the covers of two Dell catalogs. The four-color effort with the picture of the desktop set at left and the laptop at lower right was mailed into the business arena. The one with the pretty lady in the home setting was sent to the home.
Note the immediate differences: The one sent to the office is cold, full of techie terms and full prices are featured in huge type. Contrast this with the warm, fuzzy, homey cover where the computer is so user-friendly that it blends into the domestic tableau, and prices are given in terms of monthly payments, an arrow out of the Fingerhut quiver.
The insides of the books follow the tone of the covers. To the consumer, Dell talks benefits while to the business person, it's all business. Look at these two approaches to the Dell Dimension V Series.
To the businessperson:
The Dimension V series combines solid performance and incredible components without jeopardizing your business budget. This highly versatile desktop line is designed to help fill your needs economically. Value is optimized with processor options and integrated components. Every V-series desktop comes with Dell's award-winning service and support—our way to help insure that your system stays at its peak performance.
To the person at home:
For an outstanding price, you can get a Dell® Dimension V-series system to help take care of your word processing, spreadsheet and other computing needs of today. This desktop can be a big help when you need to write letters, manage your budget and get the kids to polish their book reports. Use it to send E-mails to family and friends or keep up with the latest news highlights online. The solid technology of the Dell Dimension V-series is what you need to get the job done!
Both of these are then followed with all the techie specifications.
What's fascinating to me is the implication that Dell assumes that everyone in business is so computer literate and flush that it can get away with simply listing features and quoting full prices and then sit back to await orders. On the other hand, it seems, Dell feels folks at home need more hand-holding, care and feeding.
Let's put it another way. The best-selling computer on the market today—to the astonishment of everyone who had given the company up for dead—is the iMac, Apple's super-simple, user-friendly, all-in-one, decorator-designed desktop that even a klutz like myself could unpack and set up.
My own sense: A huge market of potential customers exists out there that computer hard- and software catalogers are missing: those of us in business and at home who would buy if we only understood the benefits (not the features) of what is being offered.
I am a case in point. On the speaking circuit, I use a computer to create talks. My little old Apple laptop can deal with words, but does not have enough horsepower to include photographs and videos. So I use slides and videocassettes for that portion of the talk. What do I really want?
Someone to tell me which Apple laptop to buy, which scanner to buy, which digital camera to buy and to show me how to use all this exotic stuff. I am not interested in saving money. I am willing to pay a premium for expert help. Just as I don't do my own plumbing, my own TV repair nor my own kitchen renovations.
Because the time I would spend trying to learn computer technology and scanner programming on my own would cost me many thousands of dollars in lost work.
Is anybody out there listening?
Dell, I think.
But I'm an Apple junkie and too old to learn Windows.
Help!
Denny Hatch, consultant and freelance copywriter, founder of Who's Mailing What! (now Inside Direct Mail) and former editor of Target Marketing, is the author of "Method Marketing" and "2,239 Tested Secrets for Direct Marketing Success." He can be reached at www.methodmarketing.com or by e-mail at dennyhatch@aol.com.
