Marketing Weblog: Keep it Cool, keep it Beta - Instituto de Empresa Business School

I am sure that most of you have an email account with Yahoo or Google. If you do, you have surely noticed that the email version you are dealing with, is not a Normal one but a Beta one.

You might have thought at the beginning that it was called Beta because it was in trial stadium and further developments were to come. However, many months have passed since they launched it, and the Beta name is there…

Are they doing this because it is still under development or for any other reason?

I have not been able to confirm it with someone working at Yahoo or Google, but my guess is that the email is not under trial any more. Thus they keep the Beta name because it grants the product with three attributes:

Beta versions have been commonly used in the IT industry for software and IT products that were under development. Products that were submitted to an exclusive group of users that worked with it and submitted comments and suggested improvements to the manufacturer, that was able to improve the product before launching it.

1. You were part of an unique group whose comments were welcome.
2. You were working with an exclusive product not available for everybody.
3. The product was the newest of the newest (actually it was not launched!), granting the product with a halo of coolness and freshness.

So, if branding a product Beta had so many positive effects, why not going mass market and keeping the Beta branding? It will help to get these attributes and make everybody feel special. Moreover, in case of complains, you can always justify yourself saying that your product is not still finished!

Looks like many IT manufacturers have thought this way. The results are there and you can find many IT Beta products in the market.

For sure, it will reach a point where the Beta branding will lose these attributes and the manufacturers will look for something else, but so far so good.

What do you think about Beta branding? Do you agree with this? Do you know about any other examples?

Comments

Do you know blogger?

Yes, this program go out beta in a few weeks because his brand was further than normal version blogger and the users don't translate his accounts a other versions.

In this case change the normal version blogger to a beta version blogger was more problematic that change de beta gmail to normal gmail.

In other words, when the marketplace will be old google changes his strategies of branding.

Bye.

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