There was a time when marketers used to spend months, even years, to incubate a new brand in the marketplace. Today, in the fast growing world of technology, companies are removing brands out of the market in days! Seven weeks after it was put on sale, HP killed its TouchPad tablet. A year or so ago, Microsoft pulled the plug on its Kin mobile phones only 48 days after it went on sale. Technology companies have been cutting their losses with increasing speed – Google released Wave, its platform of collaborative work tools in May 2010 and cancelled it days later. And there are many more examples.

Increasingly, technology companies are looking at their products like the latest Hollywood or Bollywood release – if the product doesn’t take off in its first week of launch, kill it.

Some points on this phenomenon:
1. This early withdrawal is a blow to the consumer innovators/ early adopters who take the initiative to buy first. They must feel pretty cheated.
2. The biggest reason for this quick exit is because many technology players are NOT coming out with products SUPERIOR IN SOME SIGNIFICANT WAY to competition. If you want to take on the iPad, you better have a remarkable product to fight it. An inferior me-too is doomed from the start.
3. In today’s world of instant communication, the voice of critics of various hues reach the public at large INSTANTLY. It is, therefore, important that the initial reviews are EXTREMELY favourable. A host of bad reviews and you are toast.
4. However, if you feel that you have a good, differentiated product, you must stick it out. When Microsoft released the Xbox 360 in 2005, there was widespread reliability issues and the console faced serious competition from the Nintendo Wii. Yet, Microsoft decided to stick it out and now the Xbox is one of the best-selling video game consoles of all times.

Tenacity and patience are still virtues in marketing. But they need a strong glue – the glue of a really good product. If you launch a me-too product (and why you should do that beats me), it is best to forget these virtues and get the hell out – FAST.

Visual courtesy : http://www.flickr.com/photos/microsoftsweden/6102429919/