Okay, I’m not Dell’s biggest fan. I do have to admit that they have some definate Pro’s on the Pro’s/Cons List. For one, their machines are geared for very middle of the road users. That includes the business segment as well. They have nice asthetic value as well as decent performance and functionality. Not that I would ever be caught dead buying one, but I have been known from time to time to acquire a used one and find some purpose for it. Also, I still have a Dell DJ/Jukebox MP3 player that holds 20GB of my MP3’s. If only I had that many. Even that is sleek looking and quite durable. Too bad they don’t make those anymore.
Any-who… Despite my meaningless ramblings, I actually wanted to talk about a new Dell marketing ploy that my wife pointed out to me. She caught wind of it via this MSN Article. This article claims that Dell’s new Della product page is sexist and stereotypes women. I for one beg to differ. Here is a direct quote from Suzanne Choney, the articles author;
“Want to market netbooks as a fashion statement? Fine. Just don’t create a silo for women in a Web site like Della, that depicts females as poolside-lounging, latte-sipping ladies with little else to do than decide how to match their outfits to a computer.”
Granted that not all women are buying their computers as fashion statements, but having worked in retail computer sales myself, I can vouch for Dell on this one. Surely not all women are going to find this site appealing or the software suites available on this computer as useful as Dell makes them out to be. However, Dell never states any of this. They have simply discovered a customer base out there of young, fashion conscious women who care about their health and are tired of having the usual options of Black or White for their computer colors. While I’m not trying to be sexist myself, I have to say that in my experience, women don’t care about all of the tech features available in a particular computer. They are more conscious of how that computer can benefit their needs and they want it to be visually appealing as well. It’s the same sort of reasoning as to why my wife had the final decisions on what colors to paint our house. Did I really care that my kitchen had flowery wall paper in it when we bought the place? Not so much. Did my wife… oh yeah! She hated it and she would be incredibly difficult to live with if I hadn’t allowed her to make the kitchen visually appealing to her.
So all I can say to Suzanne is lighten the F$#@ up. As I would say with any other product or marketing campaign out there, if you don’t like it, don’t freaking buy it. Don’t try to spoil it for everyone else because you have hang ups with the way it’s being presented. There are probably plenty of girlie girls out there that are plenty interested in having a fashionable yet useful Net-book or Laptop. It’s the same reason why we accessorize everything else in our lives, especially girly girls. To visually express ourselves. My wife buys an iPod and what’s the next thing she buys? A fashionable carrying case for it. If there wasn’t some kind of evidence that there were women out there interested in this very sort of site (Della) Dell wouldn’t have put it out there. Just like I would suspect there aren’t a whole lot of girlie girls out there who would casually browse and shop the very utilitarian and man orientated site Newegg as me and my male tech geek friends do. So Miss Choney, get over yourself and let girls be girls and get off Dell’s back for trying to relate to them to market what I feel is a decent product. My own wife has expressed interested in acquiring a Net-book for the same purposes that Dell is marketing them for. And I know for sure that if she were to acquire one she would be thrilled if it were accessorised to her liking. Nough said.
