TiVo marketing promo goes awry | News.blog | CNET News.com Writing for CNET, Richard Shim picks up on Phillip Swann’s article on “Is TiVo Trying to Buy the Media” from yesterday.
Shim seems to side with TiVo on this one saying that basically it’s no big deal. “If you break down the deal, it really wasn’t much for TiVo to offer or for the media to accept.” Shim notes that TiVo makes most of it’s money from subscriptions that were not part of this promotion and notes that $100 of the $200 discount is available to anyone as part of a rebate system. Basically Shim boils it down to $100 off the 80-hour recorder.
Shim concludes, “So let’s add it up: It’s not really as good a deal as it was made out to be, and it’s not really for the press.”
What Shim forgot to disclose before writing his article was that earlier this week a brand spanking new shiny DirecTV HDTV TiVo mysteriously arrived on his doorstep. (Just kidding folks, of course).
On further reflection about this issue it indeed may be a little much ado about nothing and I probably shouldn’t have been so quick to jump on the bandwagon yesterday. A $100 discount is a far cry from a free TiVo but certainly the issue of how bloggers and journalists handle freebies and discounts probably ought to be explored.
I can see where TiVo would probably be frustrated and use this to try and push their message. They probably have the best PVR on the market. When you poll consumers everyone loves their TiVo but it’s a chicken and an egg thing. In order to know that you love it you need to try it. And you can’t try it until you buy it. By pushing these units out to the media TiVo probably hopes to better communicate their marketing message. Still a questionable strategy but probably done in a serious way to build awareness of their products with influencers.