Motorola Mobility is one of the few brands that frustrates me, with such history, such successful brands in the past and such stories to tell and yet it seems to fail to get people excited about much of what it does. Due to this failure Motorola Mobility is currently being eaten up by its competition.

What can they do about this? Well there are four key aspects of their business they need to take care of, these are their advertising, marketing, public relations and business strategy.

Motorola Mobility must embrace their history, look at their past successes and then look towards establishing themselves as future thought leaders. Thought leadership is something that must be achieved if they wish to gain a stronger position in the mobile (cell) phone market and build a strong reputation. The key to being a thought leader is the ability to look ahead, gaze into the crystal ball, recognise upcoming trends, while anticipating threats and opportunities.

As you’re reading this, do you know that Neil Armstrong’s famous first words on the moon were communicated through a Motorola transceiver? and that they created the first truly rectangular colour television, which eventually became the industry standard?

These are all factors that must be embraced and used by Motorola Mobility (MM) when planning their advertising, marketing and PR activity.

Their business strategy must change. Cutting out under-performing products and replacing them with more business orientated products, the old Blackberry professional audience is becoming disillusioned with them. Blackberry’s threat is MM’s opportunity.

— DS —

As CES 2012 comes to an end. It’s a good idea to consider who got what right and what wrong.

We begin with Panasonic… It seems as though they really need help with media training and the performance and running of a show for the trade and consumers.

First of all, you must focus on showing breakthrough technology, not periphery products. This was an opportunity for them to get the trade, media and consumers excited about their products and brand.

Unfortunately Panasonic seem to have failed for the most part. There was no need to have physical products on display, especially ones which do not offer anything particularly new or industry leading. The aesthetics of the conference were uninteresting and so were the performances. Not even the appearance of Justin Timberlake (promoting Myspace integration) was able to improve matters much, despite giving a superior performance.

Yep, that’s more like it.

Samsung arguably stole the show with presenters who communicated with clarity and more charisma than those of Panasonic. They focused on a Powerpoint style presentation which showed of its newest and industry leading technology. With a clean presentation space, which was unimpeded by physical products for a large part of the event.

Is this just one small reason why Samsung is the No.1 selling TV brand? Perhaps a small part of a great overarching strategy.

— DS —