Watching television I am struck by Dell advertisements. On one hand, Dell tells me, the individual consumer, that all my requirements can be met by Dell. The message is one of personalization. OK, I can buy that from Dell - that's their bread and butter. Then, later in the same day I see an ad for Dell targeting the IT director - Dell's telling him that Dell can meet the needs for his corporation completely. Well, which is it? IBM and H-P, two much larger organizations than Dell, struggled to do a good job marketing and delivering PCs to a home audience and a business audience. Dell has struggled recently financially, and I think this marketing is indicative of their problem. What is Dell?
Is Dell an online retailer of consumer electronics (flat screen TVs, MP3 players)? Is Dell a build to order shop for savvy home consumers? Is Dell the one stop shop for the IT department? Can Dell do all these things well?
Who is the buyer? Dell wants the home consumer electronics buyer, the home PC buyer and the corporate IT buyer. These are different people with different needs and very different purchasing, support and "whole product" requirements. The first buyer wants high quality items with some branding, sleek product design and some support after the sale. Dell is not especially known for branding, design or support. I'll posit that Dell can provide well-priced PCs to the home buyer, and does a reasonably good job with building and shipping PCs to corporate accounts, but Dell does not understand how to design and support a data center and has not demonstrated great customer support for corporate clients.
What's Dell trying to do? It seems to me that Dell is trying to be everything to everyone. It is trying to expand its market share into the home market with consumer electronics, and trying to gain more wallet share from corporate customers. None of these moves is necessarily wrong, but running very similar ads targeting very different buyers with different needs on the same television channel sends very conflicting messages. I watched those two ads and thought - OK, which is it Dell? Which one of these do you want me to believe?
My Take: Dell may be able to have it both ways, but I think it will be a struggle. However, Dell should find a way to differentiate its products and services to the home buyer and its capabilities to the IT corporate buyer, who has different needs and expectations. The ads I've seen don't address these differences in a compelling fashion, and when they are run close together in the same media they create confusion.
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