In today’s world of choice, feeling good about your purchase is important. Being able to tell a story is important. Feeling like the people who made the product actually care about what they’ve made is important.
In the bad old days of mobile, I often used to attend the most lacklustre device launches you could imagine. At the end of the presentations, I’d invariably ask a question from the back along the lines of, ‘what do you think of it?’ or ‘what phone are you using?’
I was always surprised by the amount of times the CEO or C-level person (or worse, the sodding product manager responsible for the device) would respond with an answer like, ‘well, I don’t really like QWERTY phones’ or ‘I’m not much of a fan of camera phones really.’
It took me a long time to eventually realise that most folk in some key positions in the mobile industry were just pushing paper about. It’s still a shock to meet a disinterested, couldn’t-give-a-toss product manager or senior whatsit at a product launch. It’s fascinating to ask them questions about their product because they generally can’t be bothered to lie, spin or be at least a little creative. Then when I get to my computer, I find it really difficult to summon up any will to write about the resulting output.
So it’s nice to see the care and attention radiating from the Motorola XOOM team. First we had the scene setting (“Tablet Evolution presented by Motorola“), then we got the introductory product video and now we’ve got ‘the making of’ video which I’ve embedded below.
In that video you’ll see a few fancy-angle shots of Motorola XOOM people talking about designing and using the Evolution tablet. The film looks good. It sounds good. It’s very well made. It’s rather Apple-esque in that the people featured appear competent and passionate. Clearly a lot of thought went into the marketing of the XOOM. And one would hope that the presentation effort will be commensurate with the product. After watching the video, I came away with the impression that — yes — however the XOOM actually performs, it should perform well.
To the industry I say: More of this please. More passion, more excitement, more confidence.
I look forward to checking out the XOOM.
Here’s the vid…