The Samsung Note; no category = poor branding. Apple did the same!

January 5th, 2012 by Darragh Kelly Leave a reply »

Samsung galaxy note poor branding? No category..Is it a smartphone, is it a tablet?This is the new marketing campaign for the Samsung Note. One of the goals of marketing, if not the most important, is to dominate a category. If you cannot dominate a category you should create a new one and dominate it. So, you need to create a product that enables you to create a…new category.Samsung does seem to have created something different with their Note, it’s not a traditional smartphone or tablet, however, they haven’t created a category. They just ask the question “Is it a smartphone? Is it a tablet?”. This would appear to me to be poor brand management, where is the focus? Where is the category? How do you get PR to leverage that? How will a customer source that product, in the tablet category? in the smartphone category? or both.

Apple made the same mistake, remember Newton MessagePad?

This is not new. I know I am a big fan of Apple and I have been criticized for only find stating the virtues of the company, however, today I break with tradition:-) Apple also made the same mistake with the Apple Newton MessagePad, they didn’t manage the Category correctly and asked potential customers in an ad campaign; What is it? There where also technological convergence issues here but the branding was also important.

I have seen on other posts that Samsung could carve themselves out a small niche with a new size category, maybe, but they need to directly define that wether that means calling it a “Mini-Tab, Mini-Tablet” etc it needs to be defined.

Conclusion

Only time will tell. Besides the branding issue I think Samasung has also another issue with the product; it doesn’t seem to address any new market problems that are not already resolved either with the Tablet or the Smarthphone.

 

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Related posts:

  1. Branding, why you need to create a new category.
  2. Brands and branding, is it really that complex?

Posted in Branding, Market Driven, Marketing

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  • Anonymous

    First of all, it was not created by Samsung, but from Dell. Well Samsung did it better.
    Second: The category was created,- but many “experts” was bribed to kill it with this stupid BS: “Too big for phone, too small for tablet” ( this is the best display that fits into the pocket)
    Guess who bribe them!?
    This who wants to sell phones and tablets and mp3 players separately.
    I remember what massive attack was against Dell Streak! OMG!
    But Galaxy Note will smash you and will open the doors wide ! This  category is the future, no mater what!

  • http://darraghkelly.me Darragh Kelly

    Thanks for the comment and you are right, it was Dell that was first with the product but I think Samaung brought it to market better.

    You mention “The category was created” and “This category is the future”, but what is the category exactly, that is the question of my post which is part of other posts talk about the importance of clearly defining the category. It must actually be a name, a noun, like “Smartphone”, “Tablet”, “PC”, “Notebook”, I don’t think that exist for this product.

    The best way to know if a category exists is to think about going to a shop and asking the sales person do they have any X, not the exact product but the category “Can you show me some PDAs, some hybird cars, some …” In this way Samsung has not created a category that I know of, they have created a product, a brand but not a category.

    As you mention, it is really easy for other companies to belittle the product and say “it’s too big to be a phone or it’s too small to be a tablet”, Samsung should be able to say “It is the perfect size for a XXXXXXX” and create that category.

    Once again, thanks for the comment and for reading the post.