Smash Robot

Google recently advertised their new phone, the Nexus S, heavily through banner ads across the web, as well as on Spotify.

Surprisingly for a company who’s success is based around advertising, they made the classic marketing mistake of advertising features instead of benefits. One banner ad showed an image of the Nexus S, and cycled through text saying “contour display” and “front and back camera”.

A contour display is a feature – as a bit of a tech lover I could assume that a contour display may give a seemingly bigger image. In truth, I’m not sure – is it brighter? Clearer? Do films look better on it? Compare that to how Apple talked about the iPhone 4′s retina display:

“With a remarkable 960 x 640 resolution in a 3.5-inch screen, text and graphics look unbelievably crisp and sharp”

Advertising a front and back camera is also not a benefit to the user – it’s another feature. While you can guess at what they mean – that it allows video calling – you’re still forcing the viewer to guess. Again, when Apple advertised the iPhone 4′s forward-facing camera, they introduced it by advertising FaceTime – i.e. what you can actually do with both cameras, rather than just the cameras themselves.

The second advert, running on Spotify, is the best example of advertising features over benefits. This advert again showed a huge image of the phone, but had the accompanying text “Gingerbread”. I own an Android phone and I’m quite techy, but even I don’t know what benefits Gingerbread on my phone has. Someone that doesn’t own an Android phone is even less likely to know what updates Gingerbread brings with it, and users that don’t have an Android phone may not even know what Gingerbread means.

It’s repeated in every marketing book that’s ever been written, but it’s worth saying again: whatever you’re advertising, don’t talk about the features – talk about the benefits of those features.