Random Brand Thoughts

Below are some random personal brand impressions I have had lately.

Toyota:

I have had a highlander for 8 years and put about 145k on it before I blew the tranny recently. I was kind of expecting 2ook before a major problem like this with a Toyota, so their quality image is a bit tarnished. Customer Service was not impressive either. I will say that a Jeep would probably be on its third transmission by 145k, so its not like Toyota is horrible quality. I bought a new car recently and it was not a Toyota/Lexus.

Bose:

I have never really been a fan of Bose. I used to sell Stereos long, long ago, and was not impressed by Bose when compared to a "real" speaker. The saying went "no highs, no lows, must be Bose". In my new car I had the option of upgrading to a package that included a Bose 277w 10 speaker stereo upgrade, Sirius, CD changer, and Moonroof for about 1.2k more. I figured I would do it even if the Bose did not make it much better. I have to say that I am totally impressed with what Bose can do in a car. The technology they use is ideal for optimizing the sound quality in a small confined area like a car. The system sounds much better than I thought, and better in some ways than the $1,500 upgraded stereo I had in my highlander with much more power.

Sirius:

I got 6 free months with the car, and figured I would not use it much, and definitely not renew it after 6. After just two week, I don't think I have used anything else, and plan on extending it for sure.

Apple:

I love Apple products, though I was a late adopter on the mac and ipod side. I bought a new 24 inch iMac the day they came out earlier this year for work. It had worked out great until it popped off while I was using it the other day and would never boot back up completely. I have never had a PC completely die like that in the 1st year before. So much for mac quality? I have not dealt with their service before, but you basically need to make an appointment to bring it in to an Apple store. So three days later, I lugged the 24" mac into an Apple store and they were able to fix it at the genius bar in about 45 minutes. Software issues I guess.

Microsoft:

I found the first MS commercial with the 6-ish year old Asian girl a bit misleading. She put together a quick slide show, and sent it out to the grandparents or something. It seemed a bit easier to do in the commercial than it actually is, but it was at least plausible the 6 year old could figure it out and do what the commercial showed her doing.

Well now we have this new commercial with the same girl. Except now she is building up a Widows 7 hype presentation by "chance", because she "happened" to see these "happy" words on her daddy's computer screen. The words chosen were obviously hand picked by Microsoft, and the production value and music chosen (though not the pics), make this one completely implausible. So we are left with Microsoft using a lying 6 year old as a shill to sell their latest operating system. Its some pretty sick stuff IMO.

GM

I love me a good marketing campaign, and you can't fault what they are trying to do, but could this one possibly work? You have the new CEO of GM walking around the design studio and saying that he was just as concerned as you might be about the quality of cars at GM. Well, he has taking a quick peek, and it turns out GM cars are the best in the world. May the best car win, and GM it turns out has the best cars. Well let me ask you this, if you have the best cars, why did you literally just go bankrupt? And, if we can be honest enough that you did not have the best cars prior to bankruptcy, are we expected to believe that in just a couple of months you have turned everything around, and are now putting out the best cars in the world? Well good luck with that one. If they pull it off though, this could go down as an important model for re-branding going forward. Just dust off the old Joe Isuzu technique.