Promotion Strategy

Essay # 4: Promotion Strategy

“Dude you’re getting a Dell” is probably one of the most annoyingly well known advertisement slogans today. However “Dude, you're getting a Dell" might have been annoying, but it was only annoying because EVERYONE was talking about it... and that's a good problem to have.

Dell uses numerous forms of media to advertise through such as television, radio, internet, magazines, and trade publications. Dell has changed its advertising strategies several times over the past 15 years, but the message that it is a direct manufacturer-retailer has always stayed the same. In the past five years, Dell has switched its television ads from the well know �Dell Dude” ads to more of a comparative ad campaign that highlights Dells technical service features. Some of the recent television ads show a customer in a store like Best Buy asking for assistance from one of the salesmen, however the salesmen just spits out a bunch of technical gibberish that the customer doesn’t understand. This advertisement is designed to show how Dell is direct with the customer and how their technical support services are superior to that of a stereotypical superstore employee.

The �Dell Dude’ was definitely meant to appease the more humorous crowd. This was an attempt to gain market share with younger consumers that needed personal computers. When Dell launched their cleverer and more sophisticated comparative ads, they were reaching more for the consumers that were tired of getting poor customer service and needed a dependable personal computer. Dell is currently running a completely different type of television commercial then it has in the past. This commercial is directed towards college aged computer gamers. The ad is for the new XPS Gaming Notebook and all it is pretty much is a bunch of supermodels assembling the computer.

Dell has a variety of different sales tools it uses that allow consumers to purchase a PC through pretty much any means. They can physically go to a retailer such as a Wal Mart, they can order one off of the Dell website, or they can even call and design a custom built PC on the phone. Dell places �E-Value Codes” for their products in all of their printed and online ads that a customer can then input on the dell site which takes them to the product offered in the commercial. Mail in Rebates are another promotional