Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!mintaka!ogicse!emory!mephisto!udel!sbcs!root
From: root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Systems Staff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Commodore & Advertizing
Message-ID: <6399@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 90 12:20:47 GMT
References: <13629@baldrick.udel.EDU>
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Lines: 53

In article <13629@baldrick.udel.EDU> BARRETT@owl.ecil.iastate.edu (Marc Barrett) writes:
>   Commodore does not spend enough on advertizing.  This has
>been clearly established.  The general oppinion is that Commodore
>cannot afford to advertize.  This is totally wrong.  If Commodore
>cannot afford to advertize, Commodore cannot afford to be in
>business.  Period.

	Ok, how much does Commodore advertize compared to its peers
	of similar size?  eg Everex?

>   Take a case study of the Gilette company.  Overall, this company is
>like Commodore, getting most of it's revenues overseas.  Gilette takes
>in less than 1/5 of the total word-wide revenues that Commodore takes
>in, yet they advertize about 100 times more than Commodore advertizes.
>Gilette spends over 1/3 of their TOTAL REVENUES (not total profits!)
>on advertizing.  Commodore spends less than 2% of their total revenues
>on advertizing.  Something is obviously wrong here, and I don't
>think it is with the Gilette company.  

	How much does Gilette spend on R&D?  How large is the Gilette
	organization?  Is the way that people select razor blades similar
	to the way people but a computer?  Your analysis does not address
	these rather important points.  Give us meaningful data, ie compare
	the way eg Apple or IBM advertise vs Commodore.

>   Commodore is fully capable of spending $100 Million (or more) a
>year on advertizing, even in the U.S. alone.  If they did, they would
>go into debt for a very short time, but the debt would be made-up for
>very quickly by drastically increased revenues.  Advertizing

	Is it the case that advertising along will make students take out
	more loans to buy Amiga?  Or that it will convince people that
	don't need a computer at all to purchase one?  Or we will start to
	convert IBM or Apple users from their machines?  $100 million is
	serious money, my friend.  And it is a lot of Amiga.  I'm glad
	you're not running their marketing organization ;-)

	Regarding your ".. know nothing about business .." statement, you
	are overdosing on ECO101.  There are people listening to your theories
	in this group who are in the business of building commercial amiga 
	hardware and software.  Suffice it to say that nothing is as simple 
	as you suppose it might be.  Were there simple formulas to success, 
	every technology company would be IBM sized and that isn't the case 
	is it?

	About the only thing I can really fault Commodore on is that
	the machine doesn't seem to have an image any clearer than "We
	sell to people who don't like Mac, IBM PC, etc".  This used to
	bother me somewhat, but it is hard to argue with success.  Or so
	I am told ;-)

					Rick Spanbauer
					State U of NY/Stony Brook