How we communicate these days has drastically changed from even just 10 years ago and if you jump back 40 years, by comparison, we were practically living in the dark ages. This is also true for how we consume media and our expectations for how technology should perform. Many times there is a disconnect from our expectations for how technology should perform, and for the experience it actually delivers.
My father, who is now in his 70’s, told me a story from his early youth from when toys and gadgets used to be advertised on the back of cereal packets. You would collect together a bunch of coupons from the backs of these cereal packets, and once you’d collected the right amount, you’d send them to an address along with your details, and with a little luck they would then post you back the toy.
One morning my father came down for breakfast and a certain advert caught his attention – this advert was for a flashlight. The picture had an illustration of a young boy with this powerful light that seemed to illuminate half the peninsula, a flashlight with near Godlike capabilities!
My father saved up coupons from the backs of multiple cereal packets over the course of several months. In his mind’s eye he was imagining himself running around and lighting up half of Penzance with this behemoth of a floodlight. What mischievous fun would be had!
Finally, the day arrived when the flashlight should arrive – he could hardly contain his enthusiasm. Having to go to school was perhaps one of the most painfully drawn-out experiences of his life (at least in that very moment it was). But the day did finally draw to an end, and he did make it back home, in Olympian time. And waiting there on the kitchen table was a package addressed to him.
Ripping off the packaging like someone possessed, he finally reached the object that had been occupying so much of his thoughts and dreams. Holding this light in his hand, his thumb edged to the button that would unleash the light of a thousand suns. He pressed it down…
…and a rather dimly lit circle trickled it’s feeble, tainted phosphorescent esque glow onto the wall.
Maybe the batteries were dying? Perhaps there was some kind of fault, as this particular light most certainly did NOT represent the one pictured on the back of the cereal packet! Unfortunately, new batteries made not one iota of difference.
As adults we all understand that advertising and marketing of many toys and gadgets is just that, marketing. Nobody really thinks that the pictures showing the latest Lego or kids action figure is going to be what we actually get when we open the box. However, the line blurs a little when we start marketing items of a higher ticket value. If we were to spend tens of thousands of pounds on a product, then perhaps we might expect the marketing material to line up with what we actually receive.
It is incredibly important that whilst one of marketing’s jobs is obviously to build anticipation and excitement for a new product, it also doesn’t overstep the boundaries of what can actually be delivered.
We are very aware of these boundaries at SARA Ltd; every piece of material that enters the public domain is scrutinised against a very strict set of criteria that maintains the sometimes-tenuous boundaries between reality and science fiction.
Our goal however still remains to produce a product that over delivers whatever our marking promises.
