It’s a hard fact of life for the hardware guys and gals of high tech that it’s usually the software geeks who get most of the glory. When software people code a software failure, they usually look like their reach exceeded their grasp; when hardware types build a flop, they look like dorks. With software, a timely patch can often erase the ugliest blemish; with hardware, mistakes are set in silicon, so to speak.
The Loneliness of Being Hardware
A recent example of this principal in action occurred with the release of Palm, Inc.’s m130 handheld computer. Before it released its latest personal digital assistant (PDA) in March 2002, Palm bragged that the device’s 16-bit screen could display more than 64,000 different colors, but it turned out the m130 could actually show far fewer. Exactly how many fewer was a matter of some dispute. A spokesperson for the company was quoted as saying that by “blending techniques,” such as combining nearby pixels, the m130 could display 58,000 “color combinations,” which isn’t quite the same thing as 64,000 colors. Palm profusely apologized for its mistake but made no offer to take its drabber-than-expected PDAs back despite the screams of some annoyed buyers. It did tell everyone it was busy thinking about some way to make it up to its disappointed customers. Industry wits immediately suggested that every m130 be shipped with a big box of Crayola crayons.
No, it’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.
Oh, there are a couple of exceptions. A few people know who Michael Dell is, though most people think he’s that young guy who says “Dude!” in all those TV commercials. But Dell is really a boring company once you get to know it. Its main business is selling large numbers of square beige computers shipped in square white boxes. It’s a great business, and Dell is a very, very successful company, but there’s not much glamour there. Dell isn’t cool and it isn’t glorious.
Then there’s the guy (Ted Waite of Gateway) who talks to the cow, but cows aren’t very cool (though the cow is kind of funny). And his company is losing a ton of money. That’s not very glorious.
And maybe Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems? Well, that’s a tough one. He spends most of his time talking about Java and the Internet, though the company actually makes its money selling expensive computers running some incomprehensible OS called UNIX. Isn’t Java software?
There is Steve Jobs of Apple. Jobs has a genius for hiring people who can design wonderfully colored and shaped computers that about 4 percent of the market wants to buy. He’s the guy who brought us the movie Toy Story and Buzz Lightyear, and he also looks pretty sharp in Nehru shirts. Some guy from the television show ER even played him in that interesting but completely inaccurate movie, The Pirates of Silicon Valley. Yeah, Steve Jobs is pretty cool. Too bad more people don’t use his computers.
But after that it all becomes kind of fuzzy. Who’s the Father (or Mother) of the Palm Pilot? Who’s the Disk Drive King? The God of Monitors? The Queen of Keyboards? The Prince of Uninterruptible Power Supplies? The Master of Removable Media?
No one knows. No one cares. It’s tough to be in hardware.
On the software side, however, superstars abound. There’s Bill Gates. Paul Allen. Steve Ballmer. Larry Ellison. Marc Andreessen. Steve Case. Peter Norton. Dan Bricklin. Ray Noorda. That Linux guy from Sweden—or is it Norway?—Linus Torvalds? Some incomprehensible Englishman named Tim Berners-Lee whom everyone calls “the father of the Web.” Heck, even Gary Kildall is famous just for failing big time. Michael Cowpland of Corel used to be pretty well-known too (though most people remember him for that wedding-day picture of his trophy wife draped across a Lamborghini).
There is, however, one hardware company that has some major media mojo attached to it. After years of dancing Bunny People, the Blue Man Group, and hyperactive space aliens, that company is Intel. Microprocessors are the hardware heart of the technology revolution and Intel makes them. Most people aren’t exactly sure how a microprocessor works, but they do know Intel produces a lot of them and many know they have an Intel in their computer. Intel is the semiconductor industry’s ultimate glamour boy, hardware’s Ken doll.
But as we all know, envy exists in this world. Our Ken has a jealous rival, someone who looks at our clean-cut builder of CPUs from the periphery of the admiring throng and grinds his teeth in frustration. “Why is everyone so crazy about him?” our hardware Iago wonders. “I make CPUs too. I’m a multi-billion-dollar company. My technology helps drive commerce and industry worldwide. Why doesn’t anyone care about me?”
Too frustrated to watch anymore, the observer turns away and strides by us. A quick glance at his countenance confirms his identity. Who else possesses that peculiar combination of dull stare, pockmarked skin, sandy hair, prominent dental gap, and eternally vacant expression?
Yes, that’s him all right. Alfred E. Motorola.
Memories of a Crushing Blow
Motorola has envied Intel its marketing prowess since the companies first clashed in the early 1980s during the rollout of their respective 16-bit microprocessors. Motorola had the better chip, but Intel had “Crush,” a prototypical kill-the-competition campaign put together by William H. Davidow. Described in Davidow’s book, Marketing High Technology, Crush integrated PR, marketing communications, and advertising in a comprehensive effort to convince customers that Intel’s ability to outdevelop, outsupport, and outsell the competition made an investment in Motorola’s technology a bad bet regardless of technical merit. Motorola was caught flat-footed by Crush and could never develop a credible response. The company ended up ceding the bulk of the glamorous and profitable market for general-purpose microprocessors to Intel.
Motorola has never forgotten Crush, and the success of Intel Inside only rubbed salt in the wound over the years. In 1999, the company decided it couldn’t stand it anymore and that it too needed to have a big corporate branding program. Thus was born Motorola’s “Digital DNA” program, a waste of $65 million that demonstrated the company had learned little from the body slam Intel dealt it years before.
Bad, Bad Genes
The first problem with Digital DNA was that Motorola never deigned to pay anyone to stick the Digital DNA logo, a sticker that read “Digital DNA from Motorola,” on their hardware. This alone was enough to doom the program. Motorola didn’t want to pay out MDF because of the expense but was missing the point. Intel’s MDF campaign allowed it sell and charge more for its chips over rivals such as Motorola and AMD. The calculation was simple: For every dollar spent on MDF, Intel saw two dollars back via chip sales and profitability. The lack of an MDF component to the campaign also robbed Motorola of the ability to direct the marketing and advertising efforts of Digital DNA participants à la Intel Inside.
The second problem was the program’s target audience: Motorola’s customers, not the customers of their customers. Motorola’s advertising for the program was thus aimed at phone makers, car manufacturers (big buyers of embedded computer systems), and electronics makers, not the buyers of phones, cars, and electronics. This strategy ensured no consumer demand for products with Digital DNA inside them would be generated. It also put Motorola in direct competition with those companies to whom it supplied chips, such as cellular phone manufacturers. Companies such as Nokia and QUALCOMM regarded the prospect of putting a Motorola logo on their phones with little enthusiasm. Again, Motorola had completely missed the point of the Intel approach, which was to make consumers demand computers with Intel inside, thus pressuring manufacturers to buy more Intel chips.
The third problem was schizoid execution. Having made the decision to target its customers, the company also diverted precious advertising budget dollars to running print-based consumer advertising as well. This wasn’t money intelligently spent; an effective corporate branding effort requires a massive and extensive media blitz carried out over an extended period of time. A few million dollars spent in newspaper and magazine ads wasn’t going to create any significant consumer interest in Digital DNA.
After a couple of years of wasted time and money, it became clear that Digital DNA was genetically defective. The program generated no end-user demand for Motorola products, no increased awareness of Motorola, and no increased demand other than that dictated by normal business necessity for Motorola products among its customers. Digital DNA was allowed to quietly wither away into obscurity.
The last time Ken passed Alfred on the beach he kicked sand in his face.