Musings of a Marketing Maven

Wenger, man­u­fac­turer of the ven­er­a­ble Swiss Army knife, now sells a 3-pound mul­ti­func­tion “knife” with 87 tools and over 100 uses. No doubt intended for price-insensitive gad­get col­lec­tors, it car­ries a hefty price tag of $1200. It reminds me of the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of smart phones.

Like a smart phone it affords way more func­tions than most peo­ple need, and suf­fers from too much com­plex­ity as a result.

The per­for­mance of each indi­vid­ual func­tion is prob­a­bly mediocre, com­pared to a ded­i­cated func­tion tool — like the embed­ded cam­eras in smart phones com­pared to dig­i­tal cam­eras. Or email­ing or surf­ing the Net from a smart phone com­pared to brows­ing or email­ing from a note­book computer.

In any case you won’t find me car­ry­ing one of these devices!

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