With 50 million units sold worldwide, there are more Razrs out there than iPods. How do you explain the Razr’s success?
Up until the Razr I think people kind of expected all cellphones to look alike. I know internally, when we looked at it to consider who would be the likely target customer, we thought, ‘Is it a limited group of people? Just men? Just women?’ I remember having an argument with my chief marketing officer at the time (Geoffrey Frost), who was convinced it would just be for men. It had hard edges. It was thin. Very masculine. I thought women would also like it because it fits into an evening bag. And it appealed to both evenly. It didn’t skew one way or the other. It just took over. I walk down the street and I see teenagers carrying it now-you really know it’s become a phenomenon.
How are you going to make sure that Motorola doesn’t peak with the Razr?
I don’t think you look at the Razr and say we’re done. The Razr is really the starting point for our whole design language. The ‘thin’ idea, you’re seeing it reflected in all the products that we’re developing. And what we’re starting to evolve now isn’t just about ‘thin’ but also the materials. We’re continuing to drive innovation in what the design is. It’s beyond just the form factor, because everybody is copying that. So now you raise the bar, look at new materials and do things that others aren’t doing.
When it comes to your advertising, how critical do you think TV is today?
It depends on the market. It depends on who you’re talking to. TV is very splintered. It’s very hard, unless you have a huge advertising budget, to get out in a mass way. So what we try to do with all of our marketing is to be almost surgical in how we take our messaging (and) make sure all the creative is breakthrough. We don’t have the huge marketing dollars that a lot of consumer electronics companies have.
If TV is such a question mark, then where do you see your money going?
I think we’re getting smarter with experience marketing, events like we’re doing here in Toronto. We know it’s important to consumers, but it’s also important to the retail reps who are talking to those consumers. We call them ‘The Last Three Feet.’ And the more we can do around experience marketing, where we can influence not only consumers but also the reps and have them experience the brand, I think that carries a lot more leverage than simply putting out a TV spot.
Segmentation has become a pretty hot topic in Canada. How do you do it at Motorola?
We segment based on attitudes, more than your typical demographics. We find that people who are very into technology could be 16. They can also be 60. It’s really about an attitude, more about psychographics. Every year we try to revise it, take a look at where market trends are going and figure out additional insights we can gain about the marketplace, and how that can influence what we do from both marketing and product design standpoints.
Music is the big value add now when it comes to cellphones- being able to download music and listen to MP3s. What’s the next value add?
I think music is different to different people. Video is another compelling part. I’m into video. I want to see movies. But the cellphone could soon do things like replace your wallet. You might use it to transfer money, or as your credit card. It’s wide open. That’s what’s so exciting about this industry.
