Marketing Intelligence by Iain Johnston

In a recent post my colleague Stephen Waddington marveled at the merits of Sky+, which I think is the best innovation in home entertainment for years. It’s the best because it works, and it’s easy to use.

 Chez Johnston, Sky+ was an immediate hit (no more chewed VHS tapes to cause the calamity of a lost Emmerdale episode), the Sky+ 160 better still (capacity for every soap and the kids’ cartoons too), and now we Sky+ HD.

It got me thinking, why has my family embraced Sky+ and not some of the other, theoretically “better” gadgets and devices I have brought home?

 About 5 years ago, having done my homework, I had worked out that the award winning Panasonic PVR was so clearly the best that we had to have it. Emboldened by the helpful and informed advice of the expert in the shop,

I purchased said PVR. Once home, I emerged from 30 minutes of adding to the tangled spaghetti behind the hi fi and announced the arrival to an expectant family. Of course I was the only one who bothered to read the manual, and because I failed within 3 minutes to show the family how to get Emmerdale on a repeat record, the whole thing died for lack of user acceptance. A bit like some major IT projects.

The problem for Panasonic was that my family’s acceptance of the new technology was being measured against the “plug and go” ease of the Sky+ box, especially the intuitively easy EPG. I can’t really complain – I was happy with LOTUS 1-2-3 for years after Microsoft came along with Excel and made things easier.

 It’s not enough for the brand owner of our consumer electronic gizmos to shout RTFM. Even making the manual available in e-copy form doesn’t help. Most of us want to plug in, switch on, press a button on the remote and go. Sky+ does this, my new Pioneer plasma screen does it, my iPhone does this, I only hope Panasonic have improved things in the last 5 years.

 I bet Match of the Day will still get deleted before I get chance to watch it.