Are you tired of waiting for companies to ship product they announced months earlier? Do you get excited and hold off purchasing something else? This is what companies want you to do - companies do not want you to buy the competitors' products. The Everex CloudBook, The HTC Shift, and The ModBook are all excellent examples of companies failing to keep their promises; they all announced shipping dates and failed to meet the deadlines.

After two decades of watching the computer industry, one rule about marketing always applies: Announce a product early so that people will not purchase a competitors' early announced product.

Consider the anticipation of the Everex CloudBook - and missing product on Walmart as well as other retailers. The CloudBook represents an alternative to the ASUS Eee and this excites people. Sadly, people who are not familiar with Linux are going to be really surprised that the CloudBook is a Linux-based Personal Computer (LPC). There is nothing wrong with Linux. The OS is very powerful. Yet, the average consumer is going to be faced with learning commands that may seem strange. Additionally, some of the software is never complete. GNOME is a great example of software always improving. And the Everex CloudBook relies now on GNOME. The challenge becomes trouble when product doesn't ship and those who review the product are not comfortable with the OS. The blame easily falls on the manufacturer.

Laptop Magazine blogged their initial impressions of the Everex Cloudbook and described very negative experiences. Despite the hiccup Everex is experiencing lately, the product will be worthy of competing with the ASUS. However, unless Everex controls their message, returns are going to be high, disappointment will reign, and buyers will stay away from the product. The dream of a successful product launch will end before there is an opportunity to get the momentum. What happened to Everex compared to some other successful "viral" campaigns?

The HTC Shift is having its trouble, too. Boy Genius Report sums up the experience, "Not in stock, not available for order, not in stores, not in anyone’s hands — nothing." The sad news is that the author is now considering other product.

In turn, jkOnTheRun discusses the missing ModBooks. The post asks, "We should be hearing reports from customers who received theirs and seeing reviews on the web but no, just the sound of silence where the Modbook is concerned.  So where are they and has anyone actually received one?"

We might start answering the above question by asking which company does the best job? Generally the best job of marketing goes to the smaller companies. I think of TabletKiosk as the premier company to properly market the UMPC and Tablet PC. They seem to just slowly penetrate the market with a consistent message: They listen to feedback and respond in a kind and courteous way. Maybe this is Martin's personality - friendly, respectable, and doesn't publicly appear to get too excited or bent out of shape.

Bill Gates did a great job with the announcement about the original Windows version. There were lines on the opening day of the product launch for Windows 3.0. I still remember buying pallets of product. In contrast to the Microsoft Windows success, Apple holds secrets tightly - so tightly that rumor sites commonly attempt to guess what is coming next. But Apple wisely uses the rumors to make sure they remain high in the minds of consumers. This is why there were lines of people waiting for the Apple iPhone. Loren bought two phones. Did he really need two?

Broken Promises: The Aftermath

What happens when the product and promise do not match? Anger, disappointment, and lots of blogging. In fact, some blogging has become nothing more than public flogging of product. No mater what is shipped - someone complains. However, the lack of product can lead to so much frustration that people avoid the product.

The Biggest Marketing Mistakes

The biggest marketing flop over the past decade belongs to the same company who used to control their marketing message the best: Microsoft. The UMPC hype was so over-the-top and unreasonable that companies that should have gotten on board went in their own direction. Intel support should have been guaranteed and never in doubt before the product announcement. But that's okay because some of the blame falls on Intel representatives that delayed shipping product.

Runner up to the worse mistake also belongs to Microsoft. This time we can reflect on the problems with Vista. Vista is an excellent operating system that is constantly trashed because the marketing message did not go with the product. The challenge with Vista is the lack of a clear marketing message. The slogan "the OS that died on the vine" comes to mind because of the delays in developing the code.

Maintaining the Message

But there is much more to the disaster of the Vista marketing. Maintaining a product message is just as important as the initial presentation and Microsoft's message became muddied. First, Vista was a little step until the next major release was coded. But the message changed. The same happened to the UMPC. Suddenly postings occurred that the UMPC needed to be pocketable and needed a keyboard. Not if there is touch! Obviously no one was controlling the message.

Maybe the key to the marketing failures belong in no one person's hands but a lack of forethought on the initial concepts is becoming more and more common. Maybe that is too cruel of a statement - what do you think? Has marketing technology lost flair?