Not only does it go all the way to 11, but it does so EXPONENTIALLY!
Today’s example of taking marketing to Ludicrous Speed is brought to us courtesy of McAfee. I’m surprised this latest white paper wasn’t plaid.
The Power of M
Security to the Power of M™ is McAfee security. It’s security that’s exponentially better. It protects over 100 million people worldwide. And it’s backed by nearly 20 years of real-world experience. Security to the Power of M is totally focused. In fact, it’s all we do. It is in our very DNA to protect our customers and to provide leadership within our industry. Every minute of every day, all we think about is how to make security comprehensive, integrated, and simple for homes, for small to medium-sized businesses, and for the world’s largest enterprise organizations. We are not distracted by non-security products. We are not conflicted about our priorities. It’s simple: We live to protect our customers. And in a world that’s becoming ever more interconnected, Security to the Power of M is not merely smart, it’s mandatory.
First of all, when I think of the letter M, I have this very disturbing vision of Peter Lorre in my head. And I really don’t think McAfee wants to adopt the Grieg theme from “In the Hall of the Mountain King” as their corporate theme song.
In fact, I have a bad taste in my mouth from way back when it comes to describing security in terms of letters. I had a colleague once who seriously tried to convince some executives that a product was more secure because it had an additional letter “s” in the name.
And if I were working for McAfee, I doubt I’d be spending every minute of every day thinking about security; I’d be spending at least one of every three minutes laughing my ass off at the Marketing department and/or trying to apologize to my customers. I actually feel pretty sorry for my McAfee rep, who is quite sensible and clueful. I wonder whether she’s sitting with her head in her hands right now.
(Amusing side note: I dutifully talked to both Symantec and McAfee at the last local conference I attended. A few days later, two different colleagues of mine showed up in my office within ten minutes of each other, bearing more marketing literature that the reps at the conference had asked them to bring to me. Dueling brochures!)
on 11/06 at 07:00 PM:
Speaking of, a while back some guy did this as an experiment and was publicized on the web pretty widely. I tried to find it, but the topic in Google has been watered down with lots of other sites and posts. Here’s some fun ones:
I wonder if there is a way to pit those brochures against each other, kinda like mashing M&Ms;together to see which one cracks first, thus finding that super strong gladiator M&M that conquers all!