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My friend David regales us this morning with a story about questionable (not bad, just questionable) branding.
Seems David wanted to buy a 2-gig thumb drive. He went with SanDisk, one of the leaders in the field.
Getting to the store, he sees row after row of thumb drives. SanDisk’s drive stuck out in his mind though. He tells why:
I had to run out this afternoon and buy a thumb flash memory drive to get some data between two machines where the CD writer was not working for some reason and there was no network. The one I bought happened to include a promotion where $1 was given to the Alzheimer’s foundation, but all I saw on the package at first was “Alzheimer’s memory drive” and wondered if it was some kind of easy-erase technology, or if it was a new form of security where it forgot all your data after a certain point…
Looking at the image, perhaps it’s a question of bad image placement. The first thing you look at when you plan on buying something is the product in the clear-wrap. So you look at the drive, and your eyes are immediately drawn to “Action” and “Alzheimer’s.”
While I like the concept, and give credit to whomever came up with contacting SanDisk, (“Hey, a drive holds Memory! Let’s go after them!”) I do have to question the location and placement of the text… When you’re storing crucial files on a thumb drive, do you really want to equate that with Alzheimer’s? Perhaps SanDisck could have found a better way of getting this important message across?
I suppose it could be a good name for a shredder…
This post is dedicated to my 98-year-old Grandmother, who’s still going strong, despite calling me my father’s name on a regular basis.
Now where did I put my keys?
