Gigableat: Does anyone here speak marketing?
From the ultra-cool gadget ecommerce site Woot, part of their pitch for a Toshiba Gigabeat MP3 player. I presume it’s meant to be fiction, but it sure rings true:
Toshiba Executive: ... So why are we drowning in unsold Gigabeats?
Toshiba Marketing Guy: Short answer: degenerating market literacy and unprecedented regimentation of key demographic segments produced a minor but detectable chill in positioning-repositioning flexibility.
Toshiba Executive: What are you talking about?
Toshiba Marketing Guy: Short answer: absent a compelling narrative for redeployment, household decision-makers maintain high levels of functional certitude toward aggrandizing top-down calls to action.
Toshiba Executive: I don’t know what any of that means. And you know, I’m starting to think you don’t even know what any of that means.
Toshiba Marketing Guy: Uhh, scalable co-branding? Destabilized convergence of action items? Synergy?
Toshiba Executive: You’re fired.