Misleading Marketing and Bad Copy Writing Lead To Disaster

Since the advent and wide adoption of smart phones in the last decade, there has been a decrease in throwing unsuspecting, fully clothed friends into pools. This correlation is obviously due to the fact that electronic miniature computers in your pocket do not mix well with water. There have been many attempts at different cases to make smart phones waterproof, but these tend to be cumbersome and go against design aesthetics of the current marketplace. This has led Sony to develop and launch the Xperia which is a waterproof phone!

At least, that’s what the marketing would like you to believe. In this case, something that appears too good to be true is. And in the end, it will probably hurt their customer base.

If you haven’t seen the marketing for this phone, the thumbnail for this blog is one of them. It depicts someone taking a video of someone else diving into a pool while having the phone submerged itself. Their commercials show a lone maverick amid a sea of umbrella users blatantly filming the rain while the phone is pelted with water. Everything about their visual marketing says “this phone is waterproof!”

Until you get to their website. It turns out that actually the phone is “Waterproof*.” Emphasis on the asterisk, which is ironically placed next to a yet another photo of the phone covered in water.

Perusing the website further yields a scaling system of protection for different versions of the phone. Some are: 

IPX0. No special protection

IPX1. Protected against dripping water.

IPX2. Protected against dripping water when tilted up to 15 degrees from normal position.

IPX3. Protected against spraying water.

IPX4. Protected against splashing water.

And so on… All the way until the IPX8 which has a duration and type of water it can tolerate. Now this makes things clear and unclear at the same time. Clearly: the phone is not waterproof. What is unclear is the difference between spraying and splashing water and why one seems to outweigh the other arbitrarily. This is a semantic conundrum because people can be sprayed with fire hoses and splashed by their nephews. Additionally, most people would be hard pressed to demonstrate in a three dimensional environment what “15 degrees from a normal position” is.

The issue at hand:

We have written before about how marketing is the selling of the ideas of a better future when a good or service is purchased. However, when this better future turns out to be false, a consumer feels duped and slighted by the company that sold them on it. This buyer’s remorse is incredibly harmful for a company’s business. Not only does it dissuade consumers from purchasing from that company again, but in an age of social media, yelp and other websites, it can be very damaging if these disgruntled consumers take to the internet with negative stories.

There is often a negative connotation for marketing, that it is underhanded and slimy. Something that is done to trick consumers into giving up their hard earned money. If marketing is done well, then this is not the case.

With Sony and the “waterproof” phone they have taken several missteps. They have created a false expectation in the minds of consumers. They have also bait-and-switched consumers in that the standard phone does not come with any water resistance whatsoever. Finally, they have poorly written their copy on the website which makes them place onus for failure on their customers. This will lead to many dissatisfied customers that will be hard pressed to purchase a device from Sony again.    

Especially if they just fried their brand new phone in the pool.