The value of the Broadcom T4 design was its ability to work at high speeds on horrible cables. In many cases, you could use it on the cables you already had without upgrading. To demonstrate the power of what it felt was the world's best chip, Broadcom demonstrated its operation using the world's worst cable...During the show, lo and behold, Broadcom's demonstration flawlessly conveyed 100 Mbps of data through the barbed wire. "Buy our parts" was the message the Broadcom marketing folks wanted to impress on their audience...In summary, the barbed wire had zero impact on signal quality. The signals went through perfectly undistorted. The only thing the barbed wire did was impress the heck out of Broadcom's customers.
ArticleIn this article, the author talks about a marketing stunt Broadcom used to sell their (at the time) new networking chip. It involved using barbed wire to transmit some data at 100Mbps to show that the chip worked regardless of the cable quality. The author goes into detail about the 4 factors that actually affect the quallity of the connection and notes that the fact that the cable used is barbed wire has 0 effect on the quality of the resultant connection. Nonetheless, the fact that barbed wire is used as the cable becomes the highlight of the demo and leaves a lasting impression on the crowd.
I love this story because it's a clear example of playing to the crowd without being deceitful. For this demo, they could have just used an older cable and gotten the same results as using the barbed wire but no one would have remebered it (except maybe the technical people, nerds unite!). By using barbed wire, every single person's (including you, dear reader) ears perk up. Even though you know nothing about networking, you immediately assume that this new chip must be amazing if it can let you send data that quickly through barbed wire. And the fact that this demo more often than not induces that line of thinking is why it's so good.
If possible, every product demo should have this type of positive shock value. Why? Because it gets people talking for the right reasons and by the time they are ready to buy, you've already created a great first impression which makes closing the sale that much easier.
Word of mouth is the cheapest and most effective form of advertising but it will always be the hardest to get and sustain. Something to think about as you create and/or develop your products.
Thanks for reading and as always, all comments, critiques and questions are highly appreciated. Here's a link to the
previous article response.