Dell Prepares to Polish Its Brand, Hires First-Ever Chief Marketing Officer

One of my neighbors just received a Dell (DELL) notebook at work, which he called a "laptitude or something like that." Like millions of other consumers, this neighbor had never heard of Dell's Latitude brand. Apparently, Dell is finally read to change that.

The struggling PC giant has hired Oracle Corp. (ORCL) veteran Mark Jarvis as its first chief marketing officer. He previously held that title at Oracle during a 14-year career at the software giant, according to AP.

What will Jarvis do at Dell? Hmmm. I can only speculate, but I have some strong hunches. Just last week, I was speaking with Oracle's VP of higher education. During the conversation, the VP mentioned that Oracle had incredibly simple brands: Oracle Financials, Oracle Marketing, Oracle Supply Chain Management. You see a trend here, folks?

Now, drive down the road from Oracle and visit Apple (AAPL). For mobile users, you've got the MacBook and MacBook Pro. That's it. As Roberto Duran put it so well, "No Mas." No tricky names. No crazy model numbers

Unfortunately, the situation is quite different at Dell. I'm not predicting that Jarvis will try to scrap all of Dell's brands. But let's take a look at Dell's current lineup. In the notebook world, Dell has the Inspiron, XPS, Latitude and Precision Mobile Workstations. If you didn't know any better, those brands could come from four different companies.

Drill down into the Inspiron line, and there's the 1501, e1405, e1505 and e1705 models. Move over to the XPS, and you'll find the M1210, M1710 and the M2010 models. Hmmm. It sounds like George Lucas and his merry band of droid designers ran Dell branding before Jarvis arrived. A savvy computer shopper might guess that the numbers reflect each system's screen size ... or maybe not.

Either way, Dell's corporate brand and product brands have rusted in recent years. Dell's corporate brand used to evoke terms like low cost, speed, efficiency and rapid customer response. Not anymore. Even Apple--known to charge a premium for its products--has eliminated Dell's pricing advantage in some areas.

I was a loyal Dell customer from about 1998 to about 2005. But I switched to Apple in 2006 because I wanted a more reliable hardware/software combo.

Dell certainly lost its way in recent years. Now that Michael Dell is running the show again, I think there are at least 10 areas where Dell can improve its business. If Michael gets things right, I may purchase a Dell PC running Linux rather than a Mac for his home.

Now, if only I could remember the system's brand name.

Comments

[RichardatDELL:]

Joe

Thanks for the feedback. We appreciate your commentary and perspective. Rest assured we are moving forward on several fronts...you mentioned 10 and I think Michae l Dell's list is longer than that. So perhaps as we go through this period, hopefully we will meet your expectations.

No business follows a perfectly linear growth path...and so as we hit a bump in the road, we expect that our histsory of learning (after just 22 years) and coming on stronger and better will serve us well at this juncture.

Again, appreciate the feedback....hopefully that next purchase will be another Dell.

2007 Apr 17 05:33 PM

[Joe Panetti...:]

Richard: Good to hear Dell is listening. I've got a Dell plasma, a Dell 26-LCD and Dell computers all over my house. But I haven't spent money with Dell, as I mentioned, since about 2005. As my blog indicates, I've been down on Dell. But that doesn't mean I'll quit on Dell. I do see room in my house for Dell/Linux with Apple/MacOS.

And our business runs a combo of Dell and Apple. I will let you know ... honestly ... if Dell is meeting my expectations. You used to exceed them. And it sounds like Dell is determined to exceed them again.

By the way, you did managed to exceed my expectations in one area: Your open dialog on your blog about Dell and the possibility of offering Linux on desktops/mobile systems. The survey about Linux customer requets was welcome. And your follow-up was certainly timely.

I'm not here to bash Microsoft. But I am here to say the world wants alternatives. Good to hear Dell is listening.
- Joe Panettieri (The VAR Guyt)
techiqmag.com

2007 Apr 17 06:49 PM