(keitai-l) Re: J-PHONE's J-SKY Service to Rebrand as Vodafone live!

Dear list,

To share my two cents on branding and customer choice, I have a little story
to tell. Some days ago I met a Japanese young lady, who came to pick up one
of the phones that we were giving away for free. I had them all lined up,
with their accessories and their chargers, sorted by carrier. She looked at
them, obviously troubled to decide which one she should take.

Wanting to help her, I started explaining some of the models and their
technical characteristics. I said something like "This one is a rather new
Sha-mail model from J-Phone, it has a built-in flash, and an advanced
camera. (...) But this ones comes with an external flash. (...) And that one
has an MP3 player..." and so on.

The Japanese woman looked at me as if I am coming from the moon. What the
heck is this woman talking about, she seemed to think. She clearly dismissed
the external flash model, saying: "Oh thats impractical! It will get lost
immediately."

Then she looked at the phones again, and finally asked "Which one is from
J-Phone?" Me: "These two. This one has the better camera though..."
Impatiently she interrupted me and grabbed the other one, saying: "I take
this one. Its pink".

I don't mean to tell this story so that we keitai insiders laugh about her
technical ignorance. I think its a rather interesting story telling us what
choices consumers make, and what the reasons behind their preferences are.

Andrea

----- Original Message -----
From: "Juergen Specht" <js@nooper.com>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 6:19 PM
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: J-PHONE's J-SKY Service to Rebrand as Vodafone live!


>
> > I think you're painting an overly critical picture here. Maybe the
> > people you know just don't get it. :) Besides as a current customer I
> > don't really care that much about what rebranding my provider does,
> > do I?
>
> Now look in the mirror and repeat 3 times: I am German. I am not
> relevant. I am not a typical Japanese customer. :)
>
> The last time you tried to explain us that your (German) mother would
> never read a big Japanese manual for a typical Japanese handset.
> And you were so right!
>
> > Oh, and changing everyone's email address should really make everyone
> > aware, even your mentally challenged friends. Unless they search for
> > the (probably disappearing?) J-Phone shops forever, to ask for advice.
>
> It's always difficult to change an established name and you can make
> it good or not so good. I think that Vodafone didn't do the best job
> yet, because they double-branded everything, but they didn't really
> explained that Vodafone is now (will be) J-Phone. So what you call
> my "mentally challenged" friends are just confused customers and
> confusing customers are never good customers. Do you understand me,
> Bernd?
>
> > I think with the clever branding going they may actually gain
> > customers. But I ain't a marketing dude (but I used to be a branding
> > person, many moons ago, and I still remember "below the line" and all
> > that)
>
> If you read my posts carefully, you will find that I said "good luck
> Vodafone". I also believe it will work out in future, it worked out
> for AU. But there will be the time of confusion. And this time is
> critical.
>
> Funny, just this morning I had a meeting with 2 people famous for
> researching the mobile industry and we all agreed that the people
> working in the industry know all statistics and everything, but they
> have normally no idea what the average, individual user thinks.
>
> Juergen
> --
> Juergen Specht, CTO, Nooper.com - Mobile Services Inc., Tokyo, Japan
> i-mode & FOMA consulting, development, testing:  http://nooper.co.jp
> Check Nooper, your little intelligent email buddy: http://nooper.com
>
>
> This mail was sent to address anima@gmx.de
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