So today is the first ‘proper’ week back at work.
Yes, I know for most of us, we all started back last Monday – but don’t try and tell me it was a productive week. You probably spent most of your time moaning and trying to work out how you could retire but still have enough cash to buy food, booze and gadgets.
Anyway, to celebrate this horrendous occasion, I thought I’d start off with a product that has – quite frankly – one of the most ridiculous product differentiators I’ve ever seen.
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls … I give you this moment of product development mentalness from Philips:
Look at that headline, ‘THEY LOOK LIKE JEANS’.
No they don’t, they look like headphones.
Bad headphones.
And besides, who the hell would even want some that look like jeans.
Scrap that, who the hell would even want some that have denim on them?
What the hell were Philips thinking????
Actually, that’s probably the problem … they’re not thinking, because if they were, they’d know this sort of thing was utterly ridiculous – even more ridiculous than that grenade bluetooth speaker? I wrote about last year.
Everything about this product smacks of a company just going through the motions.
There’s no reason for them, no benefit to them … they’re just adding to the noise – and I would bet the reason for this is because the headphone division of Philips had a KPI to launch 3 new products this season and this is ensuring they don’t get told off in their annual review.
They wouldn’t be the first organisation to ‘output for self interest’ reasons, but it still doesn’t make it any better.
When you look at the success of BEATS and countless others, you can see there are ways to make an impact on almost any market, however shoving a piece of denim on a pair of headphones and running an ad that say’s, ‘They Look Like Denim, They Sound Like Awesome Headphones’ is not one of them.
My heart goes out to the creative team that had to put this together. I’m fairly certain it will never, ever, ever feature in their portfolio, just like I doubt those headphones will never, ever, ever feature on a pair of ears that are owned by someone over the age of 7.
And that ad has the nerve to use a tag line that says, “You Need To Hear This”.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, the last thing anyone wants to do is draw attention to either that product or that ad.
An ad, I hasten to add, that has a background image that is one of the best bits of terrible cliche I’ve seen in a long, long time.
So to the lovely folks at Philips … you used to say you were about sense and simplicity, well it seems you’re only 50% of that statement these days, so may I suggest you get your act together before you end up looking like Nokia.