This particular little marketing problem with the UMPC completely perplexes me. Clearly, Microsoft and its partners had consumers on their brain when developing the UMPC … Just look at their promotional videos for the proof.
So why can’t I buy a UMPC in Best Buy or Circuit City or even Target? Sure they were available via Bestbuy.com for a bit, but that is a weak distribution effort at best.
UMPC Marketing Overhaul Strategy #2: Strengthen your retail channel presence… fast.
Where can you get a UMPC? From your friendly neighbor hood VAR of course. From who? I’ll say it again: your local Value Added Reseller.
Does the average consumer even know what a VAR is? I’m sure most folks reading this do, but, really, are we to expect that Sally Soccermom and Carl Collegestudent are going to go to a VAR, a distributor or a no-name online outlet for the next big thing in consumer electronics? Search the term UMPC in Google and check out the Google ads that come up… The only folks selling them are places that the average consumer has never heard of. Don’t click on the Ultranauts.com ad though. But feel free to click on the umpcbuzz or origamiportal ads a few dozen times. It will make them feel loved.
So the answer to this one is pretty simple. Fix the channel. Get distribution into retail… Both Intel and Microsoft have huge influence over the consumer electronics retail channel…. use it. The Xbox360 team was on The Apprentice tonight, partnered up with Wal-Mart for pete’s sake. Use that power. This is embarrasing. And once you are in the proper channels, make sure you do these 2 things:
1. Set up UMPC kiosks within retail stores (look at marketing strategy post #1 for some of the things you should be showing at the Kiosk). Go talk to your xbox team for ideas on how to execute effective kiosks.
2. Spend some of your co-marketing funds to promote the platform as well as your manufacturing partners at retail. I want to see a UMPC on the cover of the Best Buy circular in the Sunday paper.
None of this is rocket science. Again, I’m at a complete loss for as to why Microsoft and Intel have not leverged one of their strongest assets — the retail channel. Perhaps it’s because the price point is to high. Perhaps it’s because it’s less a Microsoft channel issue than it is, say, a Samsung or TabletKiosk channel issue (but these are weak execuses, if you ask me.) And then there’s the other alternative. Maybe this really isn’t a consumer play. Maybe there never will be a sub $800 UMPC.
Maybe we were misled about the direction, promise and future of the platform. I doubt it. I just think someone forgot to write a marketing plan (or at least execute it).
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