Using Celebs to promote hardware: Boom or bust???

Survey monkey lets you see results upto 100 votes if you’re on a free account, but this is technically to get a fair idea of how Indians (Read: People like us) would react if they knew their hardwares like motherboards, graphic cards, pc peripherals or such stuff were used to look good infront of celebrities. Now remember, we aren’t talking about laptops, mobiles, pre-built systems. Aces170 says:

Hmm you are asking the wrong crowd here? Ask in a non-tech domain, and the chances are 90% will say yes. Sad but, Kareena’s size zero campaign has worked wonders for Sony VAIO. I am pretty sure it wont be same for RAM or mobo etc…

So!!! Would you like to see celebs selling you motherboards/graphic cards [India btw]

Yeah well, let’s just say there are few people from couple of companies who believe that they should use celebrities to launch motherboard and graphic cards.

I explained them in sweet language but it seems they are just not aware how public is. Just in the spirit of things and for the good of our sanity, I am taking this small survey. Just in case if any company asks if this tactic would work? I could simply show the survey results.

Yeah- I am serious. Some management do think celeb power for pc H/W will work. Here’s the link for the survey:
Click this link to say “NO!!! The cake is a lie!!!”

The official “Dude, the cake is a lie!!!11″ facebook page and other short stories!!!

Yeah!!! Facebook too!!! Here’s the link.

Military/Server class/grade/Standard Mosfet/chokes/Solid caps in consumer grade equipments.

I am writing on behalf of a friend in the army who questioned me all this in the middle of the night.

Be honest because someone else knows about it too!!

I am The Sorcerer and I try to stand by the truth- no strings attached.

I was a gamer back not-to-long ago. I enjoyed lot of tournaments- halo, microsoft’s RTS tournament, techtree, WCG, ESL-Europe (its an online league), etc. and I missed those days. What I missed is getting those prizes and they were pretty good. Not exactly trying to live those days, but I try to help guys to secure sponsorships for their gaming tournament by forwarding plans.

Recently I helped Abhinav Rai to secure a sponsorship with Gigabyte (he requested it- and he asked gamebashing via facebook if they have any contacts) for Thapar university‘s Aryana festival, named IMMOLATION tournament. It did come with a large space of delay followed by a bitter sweet of the cake. The tournament was held between 21st – 24th October 2010 so its a recent event.

There was a 2-3weekish gap between the time I forwarded Abhinav’s request to Gigabyte India and when Abhinav got a reply back, despite giving the sample poster, presentation and list of requests for sponsorships at a time of forwarding the email for sponsorship request. When he was contacted they refused cash sponsorship. Fair enough atleast GBT India was being honest about it. Then they said (after a day’s delay) that Abhinav will get 3 boards worth Rs. 5,000 each and he was being told it was a “good” board.  Abhinav went for it as there was no reply from other companies who did sponsor in the past.

The board that he received was an end of line/commercially phased out economical board (that was worth 4k about 1 year ago? its worth about 2.7k whoever has stock of it) G41m-combo with Intel LGA775 socket. I was being told by Abhinav about this 2-3 days ago. Calling a 2.7k worth board as 5k? that too a board that is commercially EOL? In a college gaming tournament? Maybe Gigabyte India is new to sponsoring gaming tournaments but come on!! If you see International Gigabyte online giveaway in facebook they give out good stuff just to say Why is Gigabyte a good brand or tagging yourself  in their product lineup. If you are seeing GBT India, good motherboards from intel were given for GOOC 2010 Indian qualifiers that was held in techenclave online. Now I am in touch with motion gaming and xtreme gaming guys who are planning to have few tournaments, some of which that I’ve been told are college based. Gamers are not dumb. Now I understand Gigabyte India is only into motherboards, but if this is the approach towards sponsorship, not many people would appreciate tournaments sponsored by Gigabyte. When you say “good”" board worth 5k NOW,  You assume its one of those AMD 785 chipset board with USB3/880G chipset board OR Intel H55 chipset board, yeah?

The least they could have done is notify directly that they are giving a g41m-combo board that is an LGA775 motherboard and retails for about 2.7k approx. I wouldn’t have even posted this if that honesty was maintained. Honesty- please!!! The next thing they should do things right is proper product placement. EOL board on a gaming tournament? This is as bad as tournament claiming “Prizes worth ₹1 Million rupees to be won”, and next thing you know it the only way you can get that is being a 5 man army in counterstrike, player in nfs, DOTA, fifa then win all of them and consider the MRP of the product (which no1 follows even when a product is newly-launched). This is a gaming tournament, please do not kill the love!

By the way, the info about this tournament was put on gamebashing and e-sports India.

Now there is a little typo on the prize distribution so these are the scores as told by Abhinav:

The winners of counterstrike who belong in a team of 3-5 members received Rs. 20,000 + Goodies Gigabyte G41M-combo (Read carefuly: Not each).

The winner of Need for speed: Most wanted “Dalbir Singh” got a Gigabyte g41m-combo

The winner of Fifa 09 “Manjot Singh” got a Gigabyte g41m-combo

Edit: If you are wondering, the goodies and money is not given by GBT.

Being honest- the most simple thing to do!!!

This is a continued post of this…

When you made a good product for the good price, market it honestly- it WILL sell eyes closed. If you overexaggerate facts on a good product, it will turn out to be a bad apple.

Why kill it by overexaggerating and putting up empty promises? What’s the point in putting infront a technically great product and then overexaggerating? If you call your low end board the “best” board there is, you’re also saying there’s no point in buying boards more expensive from the same brand and chipset compared to this unless you want to waste money and showoff.  Being politcially/technically/grammatically is tough, but effort has to be made. Make sure that if you are talking about a new feature- specify how it works. If you are going to keep the necessary details as “secrets” deemed in marketing materials, I am sorry people will deem that this is a marketing gimmick.

I understand and respect that you have been from sales background that is beyond my understanding (therefore explains my “passive” participation in my stores) but you are dealing in something which has to be marketed using proper technical know-how, even if you are putting it in layman’s terms. No disrespect but most of us are competant and educated enough to do basic research and out of them even fewer don’t really mind spending for something that is honest by his word and it does the job as they say, even going to the extent of importing it via newegg/amazon. You might say its less despite the fact that a dealer easily secures 10 orders of a great product within 1-3 days flat! Remember the days when Abit IP35-e were sold like hot cakes?

If you think that I am on a mission to “deface” a company, you got it wrong. Just so that you know, I used MSI RS480, Asus a8n sli premium edition and Asus p5q deluxe (where I played musical chairs with its bios updates till they released a stable bios to run 800mhz cl5 on stock after 4-6 months in gap), then radically jumped on the biostar bandwagon, then got an opportunity to review Gigabyte motherboards and handle/tackle many MSI issues for my friends. If you say something wrong someone will object to it. It is you who has to improve on it rather than trying to make them do your bidding. Be honest- it is the most simple job to do as you end up not covering your tracks/lies. It is also the most honourable thing to do as many people try to relate honesty to the letter with a product- its a human thing!