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The relentless juggernaut of today's marketing machine grinds along, chewing up the consumer and spitting out the pieces.
I recall a photograph capturing what at first glance appeared to be a near-riot taking place outside a department store in a busy Paris shopping district. Security guards and police formed human chains to cordon off a crowd intent on surging forward. The mass of humanity, pushing and shoving for all they were worth, single-mindedly wanted to breach the thin blue line. It was a chaotic tableau; a grasping, shouting, falling, desperate, messy tangle in the name of a video game console called the Sony Playstation Two.
The line-ups are the thin end of the wedge. Die-hard tech fans have been shot at and beaten up in a now familiar piece of corporate street theatre that's played out repeatedly in the over-hyped prelude to the retail launch of video game consoles. Why the madness?
Perhaps I'm committing technological heresy here, but isn't such consumer hysteria out of proportion to the product on offer? Consider this: developers innovate and push the envelope just that little bit further to produce a chip that processes information faster than its predecessor, displaying sharper graphics and topping it off with a few more added extras. Not exactly the proverbial great leap forward. Yes, to be fair, the companies are responding to competitive market pressures and the consumer. That's capitalism one-on-one. Tech companies can't afford to stand still and our fifteen-minute attention span culture won't accept it for a nanosecond if they did. So what's the deal with the frenzied interest that invariably accompanies each successive product launch?
Marketing is compensating where innovation is lacking, picking up where innovation leaves off. Like Martha Stewart, spin, advertising campaigns and product-placement play the role of a skilled interior designer, papering over the cracks and adding a glossy touch. The deficiencies and shortcomings become apparent when you happen to scratch below the surface. The only innovation that seems to be going on to innovate new ways of reducing the consumer to a gibbering wreck.
So, product developers, don't tinker around the edges and create artificial bottlenecks in the supply chain. Give us something that'll really surprise us, like a video game console that can brew the perfect latte. I'd wait in line around the block for that. And another thing: wake up guys, it's a video game console!