“I listen to a customer call every day. Every single day.”
Dell Global Chief Marketing Officer- Paul-Henri Ferrand.
I am impressed: I have met hundreds of heads of marketing and never has any of them told me they devote this much time to actual customer contact. Most marketing directors I meet speak of their customers as an abstract quantity, or perhaps an undiscovered exotic species. This probably explains why most heads of marketing are have a disproportionate reckoning of the importance of their brand in their customer’s life.
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Not Paul-Henri from Dell. He seems different. He is French and charismatic (which helps) but more than that- he talks with conviction and ambition about the the transition towards a ‘new Dell.’
The old Dell as I remember it, is a commodity box shifting business which was sales focused and masculine. If they had a motto it would have been “pile em high and sell ‘em cheap”.
The new Dell, Paul-Henri envisions is a company that puts customers at the heart of the business. The new Dell strives to be more of a product advisor rather than a vending machine. Dell should guide customers through the tyranny of overwhelming choice. This company should provide personalized devices but without making you feel like you are building your own computer from scratch. This re-invented company strives to understand what women want and “help women achieve their objectives and their dreams.”
Sounds good but has Dell really changed or is this just the same old Dell dressed up in blingy crystals? Does Dell really communicate what women want from technology other than laptops in a pink or red shell? And why does the Lady Geek/The Times Survey show that only 6% of women think they speak the female language?
I asked the Lady Geek Panel what they thought of Dell’s understanding of women. Here’s a few quotes;
“When I think of Dell as a brand, I always think that you will get a decent quality spec netbooks, good value for money but I don’t like the way they position technology as a fashion accessory-its not as if I am 15 years old. The sorts of women buying these products are professional educated women”
“Dell’s marketing still doesn’t reflect what they are truely trying to achieve here and still dumbs down the technology when talking to women. I look forward to the day when their advertising agency truely understand what the business is trying to do with personalised technology.”
I firmly buy into Paul-Henri’s vision of a company that is trying to understand what women want. Are they there yet? By no means. Do they need more insight into women? Absolutely. However, no-one can dispute that Dell has clearly changed. One look at their product pipeline shows that like Apple, Dell are trying to re-define product categories and are looking to women as an audience for these product categories:
For example, the Dell Mini 5 aims to bridge the gap between tablet and smart-phone. This is intended to be a portable, always-on Internet device which is small enough (unlike the iPad) to fit into a hand-bag, and yet big enough to offer a PC like browsing experience.
It may seem like a small thing, but it’s refreshing to see Dell trying out new form-factors at a time when the rest of the industry is converging on specifications which were previously invented by Apple. Dell recognise that women and men want different things from technology.
And with Paul-Henri leading the ship, I am confident the best is yet to come.
About Belinda Parmar
Lady Geek brings you research and Lady Geek TV gadget app news! You'll find more about it all over on http://ladygeek.org.uk
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