Glowing red cyborg eyes,
bombs dropped from stealth fighters, emotionless calls of "DRRROOOIIID" every time you get a text message -- it's enough to scare yesterday's lunch out of anyone. Verizon's no-holds-barred advertising campaign for the Motorola
Droid has been so
hellishly frightening overwhelmingly successful, in fact, that it appears to be paying dividends either directly or indirectly against Moto's biggest rivals. YouGov's BrandIndex -- an ongoing survey measuring brand loyalty through some secret-sauce methodology that only analysts would fully comprehend -- shows a marked spike in Moto's score in the critical adult male category, while Apple and RIM have taken hits over the same period. These numbers look terribly volatile over a relative short span, so we're not going to be rushing to any conclusions -- but by any measure, it's pretty wild to see Moto go from a has-been to besting the bulletproof cult of iPhone in just a few short weeks. In the long term, it'll be interesting to see just how deeply Moto's and Apple's carrier relationships are factoring into public sentiment; after all, momentum's certainly on Verizon's side right now.
posted November 24th 2009 4:23PM
go Moto!
@maveric101
Yeah, go Moto! Go right out of business. This spike means nothing. Probably not even selling as well as the Palm Pre did. It looks like the graph at the end is starting to taper off for Motorola. The Droid won't have any long-term sales. Aside from advertising blitz there isn't much incentive to own a Droid. By early next year, the smartphone market will be flooded with Droid/Android look-alikes all competing for top spot. It'll be a battle fought with low prices and extra unnecessary features with the winner being the Android flavor of the week. In three months nobody will remember what a Motorola Droid was. Not even Motorola who'll be out of business shortly after.
@maveric101
i dunno it's surprising how many people know about the droid. even my dad has heard about it and is thinking about getting one, and he's, well, not exactly a tech person. on the other hand, i never had anyone ask me about the pre.
The droid is a bit of a geek phone, who also hapen to typically be in this demographic. As an aside, is there any chance of fixing the comment system?
@1
Whats wrong did the comment system downrank you?
@1 the Engadget comment system = #1 crapgadget of all time
I still prefer my Palm Pre.
@(Unverified)
I have a palm pre, but I still prefer the droid. Only thing that stopped me was verizon's high pricing.
@(Unverified) cuz you're a chick.
DRRROOOIIID
@va jj
Beats the hell out of "Hello Moto"
The advertising is cool, but I am an iPhone owner and I'd recommend the Droid because it has the features that drive me crazy about the iPhone. Keyborad, battery, camera, and free turn by turn app from Google that would cost me . . . well let's call it infinity cause I can't have it on my iPhone.
Gadget nerds know Droids got the Gadget goods.
@Teer1998
note keyborad is not a typo but the actual name of the keyboard on the Droid phone... yeah that's the ticket . . .
@Teer1998
I thought maybe you typed it on an iphone :)
@Teer1998
Odd, last I checked, my iPhone has a keyboard, a battery, a camera, and free turn by turn directions. Want to try that again?
What? What was... was that Dr.Spaceman? I can't hear you from below there...
I believe it. A radio talk show host here recently got a droid and said he completely hates everything about the phone and can't figure it out. But he said he's keeping it and loves it. Why? Because it says "DRRROOOIIID". That masculine image is a force to be reckoned with.
@MarcusMaximus
Either they are very out of touch with anything "techie" or they're not that bright. It's not a difficult phone to figure out the basics if you have any kind of experience with technology.
I found it very confusing too. There are so many buttons to do things, I am never sure what does what. I often found that my guess was wrong.
The Nav is amazing and the screen res is nice but the rest is pretty crap. The keyboard was not useful. The UI is painful. Things don't move or flow very well. It felt very hacked together to me once I got into the device a bit more.
I don't blame people frustrated with ATT wanting to switch but a Vzn iPhone would be far superior to a Droid any day.
The funny thing is that most of the reviews complain about the Droid not having enough buttons (specifically the call and disconnect buttons).
The only people that consider a Droid confusing are people that expect it to act like an iPhone. It doesn't. It is a different phone, not a clone. Get past the pre-convieved notions of what it is "supposed" to do and how it does it vs the Droid.
Lets see a power button on that (marked with the power symbol) that... turns the phone off an on. Not a tough one.
The one brass button which is the camera button. Period.
and the up/down volume rocker... which... makes the volume go up and down.
Now if you add in the touch buttons on the face...
the back arrow... goes back.
The menu button brings up a menu
the Home button {{gasp}} take you to the home screen
and the real confusing one
the search button allows you to search.
If that is confusing... then yeah... maybe you are better off with a single tasking phone with one button.
Wow I guess Blackberry lovers are a rare breed according to this survey...
I think it's more the phone itself than the advertising. The Moto Droid is a much heavier and larger phone and just seems much more masculine (if a phone can be masculine, this is it). So far I've sold about 90% Moto Droids to men and I'd say 80% of the Eris sales have been to women.
@lecherousjester so what do you get by, say umm, coupling Droid and Eris together?
A mod.
The Droid Izzard?
I'm reeaaaallly praying that we don't have another fanboy war up in here....
@N900 We have a better chance of world peace breaking out than of not seeing a flame war. Lol.
Hmm, Yougov is a UK thing, and brand perceptions are often quite different between the UK and the USA. As far as I know, we don't have the droid yet, Motorola have a few Android sets out though.
@1
Almost... UK milestone launch: 7 december
@1
BrandIndex is run in lots of countries outside the UK. This will (or should be) data from the BIX survey run in the US. I could run the UK numbers for us as I have a subscription, but I would be surprised to see Moto do as well here as on the chart in the article
@1 It's a UK 'thing' (i.e., company) but it operates in the US, among other places. It's rather misleadingly named as it's nothing to do with any government (other than paying taxes to them and predicting poll results).
apple's taking a plunge as more and more people hear about lockouts by the company. who wouldn't want "open"? marketing as the "competitor" against the evil iphone was a good direction it seems. they did surprisingly well licensing "droid" from lucas. not something i would have done so they out-thunk me on that one.
if the phone wasn't so damn ugly i'd own one too...
oh well all will be made well with my x10
@Wikimon, the iPhone is the best thing that has happened to the mobile industry since its inception and specially because:
1) it has jump-started smart phones into the main stream
2) it is putting an end to the evil days of WinMo domination
Though Android is already suffering from over-diversification and fragmentation, in terms of raw potential and capabilities it has already surpassed WinMo long ago and that's why manufacturers chose it over WinMo. However this fragmentation is also what will never allow Android to catch up to the iPhone.
Regardless, consumers benefit either way and will benefit far more once evil WinMo finally dies.
by the same token the iphone is going to continue to lose market share as it's lack of features continues to grow.
google will continue to work towards "defragmentization" and eventually we'll get to a point where app market is relevant to the type of phone/device viewing it. that is to say you will only be able to browse and download apps from the market that are actually compatible with the device you are using.
the only big limitation android has is the carriers being stingy with bandwidth (tethering etc). enough pressure and we'll get them to do right
@Wikimon I thought the iPhone was gaining marketshare, not losing it.
The way I see it, there's too many companies making Android phones now... leapfrogging over each other. Not to mention models. First, all the geeks were wetting themselves over the CLIQ, today it's the Droid. The next Android phone will surely be better than both but by then all the folks who are into Android will already have a Droid. We'll just have to see how it all plays out... Competition is good.
I don't understand the chart. How I read it the Motorola brand has the same score at the start of the period as the end of the period, so surely that's not a good thing when you've spent so much on advertising?
Doesn't this mean that the advertising accounted for a spike in brand loyalty but ultimately hasn't changed the Motorola's brand loyalty?
@TheBoneMachine I think it kind of depends. In this case, both Apple and RIM's customer loyalty dropped while Motorola's stayed relatively the same. The question on my mind is where did all of Apple and RIM's customers go if not the Droid? Would like to see the same chart with more manufacturers on there.
It also helps that the Droid is a better phone.
@JS For what it's worth, everyone I know that has a Blackberry for business use either has an iPhone or something else for personal use.
Yeah, it's pretty much the same with PCs. Everyone I know that has a job has a PC, but plays with Macs from time to time...
@JS So uh, listened to any music on your droid lately? Organized some playlists?
Actually I just open my music app and search for my song. Or playlist. I can orginize it too. The place it really shines tho is when i want to listen to the music and browse the internet and check email.
@JXCGunrunna Well good for you. Most people have lives *outside* of email and the internet, though. Just sayin.
I switched from the iphone to the droid and I've been very happy with the device. The advertising didn't make me switch though, it was the pure awesomeness of the device and the constantly unreliable network I had with the iphone.
What is this "score" that they are measuring by? Sales? I find it hard to believe that blackberries are so low in the 18+ Male category...
@(Unverified) Blackberries aim to the older sort. Plus, when I saw the droid, I really wanted to toss my 8330 in the trash. Sadly, this isn't happening for another year and a half.
it says 18+. Doesn't that mean ANY male from 18+?
I don't know that I've ever owned a Motorola anything.
@XChrisX Probably because up until now it was the only phone that did what it did. Things are changing now.
Brand loyalty is stupid. I know what brands I generally trust, but blindly supporting everything a brand sells seems stupid.