Okay, it hit me this morning when I saw a headline in the PCWorld digest: "Don't be Blinded by 'Gadget Lust.' Me? That's when I recalled my trench theory about new consumer electronics, first espoused about a decade ago.
The article, written by Mark Sullivan, says Gadget Lust is a term used to explain why people wait in line for the new (fill in the blank) or almost anything with an "i" in front of it - Apple stuff. It runs through the various stages of "mystique and hype," chatter in the tech community, ad campaigns, pilfered pictures of the new product, etc. and suggests you be honest with yourself about WHY you are buying this product. That's it. If you can admit it's for your image - fine. If it's a great conversation piece that shows your firm is on the edge of technology - fine. All good reasons to buy something new, especially if it's a useful tool and not just an accessory. That's true of a lot of the Apple products, hyped or not.
I was fortunate to have many gadgets pass through my hands during a tech reporting career. I could try them for free. Unfortunately, they had to go back. But it gave me a chance to play, evaluate and decide if I really needed to buy this. Most of the time the answer was no. "What!" A tech guy who is not by nature an early adopter - who refuses to sacrifice putting gas in the car and food on the table for the latest gottahaveit. How can this be?
I knew a news photographer in Milwaukee in the 70s who had to have the "Pulsar," one of the first digital watches. It would display the time digitally with LEDs - if you pushed a button on the side of the watch. Cool. I was sporting an "Acutron" at the time (complete with a calendar that bent around the band). It displayed analog time (sigh), but I didn't have to push a button. I was a bit jealous, but not jealous enough to run out and buy my own Pulsar.
Fast forward to now. People may find this hard to believe, but I don't own every new gadget that comes out. Not everything brand new is better than the older model. That's where gadget rust and the "trenchers" come in. Many of us are reluctant to change the way we do things, the tools we use, just for the sake of change. We get technologically rusty and it takes a very good reason for us to abandon the familiar for the hyped improvement. Trenchers stay with what they know and will not stick their heads out of the trenches until someone they trust proves it's worth the risk. They won't buy the first year of a new car model. They won't run beta software. They won't run to the store, or stand in line for anything.
What's all of this mean? If you're selling a service aimed at a broad market, tell a real, convincing story about how it's going to solve my problems. Show the product in action. Hype sells one audience; utility and value sell another.
(Written on my Palm Pilot using graffiti ---- just kidding, but I still have one)
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