Katie Sternberg and Allison Kurpius of Fix Your Marketing Blog have an interesting post today about extreme product differentiation: your team logo on the A/C unit of your house. You know, that big gray box that is usually hidden by bushes?
While I can understand not wanting to spend extra money on customizing the look of an A/C unit, I remember fondly my Spider-Man credit card that I got after college.
No matter where I went, whenever I showed it, it sparked conversation. When Marvel and MBNA parted ways, they sent me my new card: a gray piece of plastic. I quickly closed the account.
Personalization is here to stay; why else would anyone pay extra for a U2 branded iPod, or spend real-world dollars to put virtual clothes on their avatar in Second Life? In fact, so much of Web 2.0 is based on the idea that people want to participate and customize their online experience, whether it’s at MySpace or an iGoogle page.
The A/C unit is the extreme example, but if you’re looking to move product, allowing people to customize the look and feel can be the deciding factor. I may not want to put the logo of my beloved Patriots on my A/C, but it would be cool if after I’ve already chosen the A/C unit (if I didn’t live in Maine), I could customize it with racing car flames, or a nature scene, or Matisse’s Dance.
Katie/Allison (they don’t sign their posts, so I’m not sure who wrote this one) opines:
But wouldn’t the money they spent figuring out how to put the
University of Georgia logo on the side of the unit and market it have
been better spent on real product enhancements like making their units
more energy efficient or quieter or smaller?
As someone who cares about the environment, absolutely. And for me, a quieter, more efficient A/C unit would be the best differentiator. However, I bet you it’s a lot cheaper to license college sports teams than to reinvent the cooling system, and a lot more profitable, anyway.
Ummm…wait a second. I just checked out the York A/C site. The page reads..without trace of irony, "Custom colors and college logos you’ll feel comfortable with — that’s innovation."
Uh, no. That’s not innovation. Licensing college teams hasn’t been innovative since…well, since there have been colleges. Oooh, different colors?!? Didn’t General Motors overtake Ford in the early part of the last century by offering multiple colors as opposed to just black?
York: college logos on your A/C units might make alumni happy, but it’s hardly innovative. Why don’t you work on that whole ozone-depletion, greenhouse gas thing you’ve got going on instead.
Go, Thoroughbreds!
Rich Brooks
Differentiating Myself One Post at a Time
