Marketing Wi-Fi to Dummies (and Others)
An interesting perspective on how to sell a new technology to the masses: MediaBulletin looks back at Intel's Wi-Fi for Dummies marketing campaign, launched in late 2004. To help people better understand what Wi-Fi (and Intel's Centrino chips) had to offer, Intel collaborated with the publishers of the Dummies Guides to distribute more than a million copies of a 30-page 'Wi-Fi for dummies' book for free throughout the UK.
Members of Intel's ad team, the article says, "were clearly delighted, and there are plans to repeat the exercise in another market."
The article calls it a "very smart and tenaciously executed idea" — it's certainly a very creative one — though, as the article also admits, it's hard to say quite how much impact the book might have had on sales of Centrino laptops.
Still, it'll be interesting to keep an eye out and see whether this kind of marketing technique pops up again for new technologies in the future.