Can This Affordable Security Cam End Ring's Reign? (You Won't Believe the Price!)
Plus: A correction to the historical record
Today’s headline was written by OpenAI’s GPT-4 (aka ChatGPT). I fed it my “Chart Watch” post below and asked for headlines “based on formats that follow the data on which headlines get the most clicks.” The above is the option I liked best. Did it get your attention?
This week, I must begin with a correction to the historical record. In my last report (“A ‘Siren’ Category Yields a Winner at Last”), I claimed that our industry’s desire to chase success in the duster category “all began” with Static Duster. Well, it actually all began with Q-Direct’s Magna Duster, “the incredible duster that works like a magnet.”
Fun fact: KERRmercials, one of your 2022 True Top Producers, created this spot way back in 1997. Anyway, Static Duster followed Magna Duster, resulting in a classic duel of the age. Both campaigns ended the year in the top 10.
Chart Watch
Sight Bulb
Pitch: “Incredible HD cam” is “as easy to install as a lightbulb”
Marketer: Trend Makers
Premium subscribers got a preview of this project back in November. It has now been on the DRMetrix for more than a month and is on the verge of breaking into the Top 50.
My thoughts haven’t changed much since my initial evaluation. Once I understood the product (I originally thought it was limited to light fixtures), I knew it would be a winner. A Ring for $29.99?! That’s a no-brainer. As I explained previously:
Ring has spent millions of dollars creating a market for this type of product, and its cheapest indoor camera is about $60. That means Sight Bulb’s $29.99 ‘buy one, get one’ offer creates the illusion of a competitive product for one-fourth the price of the market leader. It even has “action tracking technology,” a feature the more expensive Ring camera does not have.
If you read that carefully, you may have noticed a word that suggests there’s a “but” coming. That word is illusion, and here’s the “but” … I don’t believe it’s possible to deliver on the product’s promise at this price. There’s a reason Ring isn’t selling cameras for less than $60 (and they don’t even have to worry about DRTV margins).
The issue here is that the Ring comparison is a two-edged sword. Sure, it makes this product look better and cheaper than the competition. However, Ring is also the one setting consumer expectations. As I said before, it’s not really hardware they’re selling. It’s the convenience of a “slick app, cutting-edge cloud storage technology and a dedicated support team — among other (very expensive) things.” That is to say, Ring is selling a great customer experience that this product can’t possible replicate at this price.
Will consumers be reasonable and think, ‘Hey, what did I expect for $29.99?’ Or will they send this product back and then run to the Internet to complain they did not receive a Mercedes for a Hyundai price? I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide.
Look, I get it! I came up in the bad ol’ days, too, so I know the drill. Our commercials have to be compelling, so we can’t help but over-promise and under-deliver. This used to be no big deal. We moved fast and got out quick. Prices were low, so returns were, too. By the time the complainers caught up to us, we were done and on to the next project.
These days, however, the Internet moves way faster than we can. And just as Ring has set high expectations for surveillance cameras, the dominant online retailers have set even higher expectations for customer satisfaction. In other words, I just don’t see how any project that doesn’t live up to today’s ‘Amazonian expectations’ can end well.
Recent Tests🔒
Perfect timing! I just wrote about how narrowly focused cleaning products seem to be doing the trick these days, and here comes yet another one to test my hypothesis. 👇