Nextel: death by marketing.

By Gonzalo López Martí  /  LMMIAMI.COM

• A few weeks back (before my protracted and well-deserved Eurotrash vacation) I analyzed various brands who manage to carve a solid following and healthy revenue despite their seemingly lackluster advertising.
• For instance, Rolex, a marque that has enjoyed steady sales and a staunch cult following throughout the decades despite its bromide ads.
• Why?
• Because the product is superb.
• True, few things are as useless as a wristwatch in 2015, let alone one that’ll set you back north of $4k for an entry level model.
• Nevertheless, owning a Rolex is a risk-free investment with flawless consumer satisfaction: the user can look like a shameless yuppie at virtually no cost whatsoever.
• Its resale value is second to none so you can simply purchase it, wear it and sell with minor depreciation.
• Talk about a paradox.
• Unfortunately, history is littered with cases of brands that did not have as happy an outcome as that of the Swiss contraption mentioned above.
• Many great, useful products did not have Rolex’s caché and succumbed under the weight of misguided marketing and advertising.
• Exhibit 1: Nextel.
• It was truly revolutionary and disruptive.
• I use the past tense because I haven’t seen a functioning Nextel device on US soil in years.
• Is it still around?
• I know it still enjoys some popularity south of the border.
• I still frequently hear the distinct bleep in my travels to México.
• Not in America.
• Up here Nextel seems to be out of the picture for good.
• What a shame.
• See, Nextel was texting and Whatsapp before texting and Whatsapp even existed.
• It was mobile Skype even before desktop Skype was invented.
• Minor feature enhancements could’ve turned Nextel into a full-fledged social network with functionalities akin to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat & Periscope combined.
• For one thing, Facebook, Twitter and so on might be hugely successful companies but they did not invent the categories they operate in.
• They improved pre-existing ideas.
• Nextel was new, a pioneer in its segment.
• Nextel came surprisingly close to make true the SciFi dream and Silicon Valley obsession of permanent life streaming.
• More so, as opposed to Silicon Valley freeloadin’ logic, Nextel’s revenue model was not based on ad sales.
• It charged hard cash for it services (something most Silicon Valley blowhards have no cojones to attempt).
• Some Monday morning QB marketing guru should write a book about it.
• Well, not really, nobody would read it.
• That’s how tarnished the Nextel brand went down in history.
• What on earth went wrong with it?
• Why did it fizzle out so sadly?
• Did it go public too soon only to fall victim of Wall Street’s perennial near-sighted greedy anxieties?
• It never ceases to amaze me.
• In my humble opinion, the big mistake was the way it was marketed.
• Instead of portraying it as the cool & revolutionary lifestyle enhancer it could’ve been and was, they took the short view and pitched it to a seemingly “rational” consumer: the blue collar crowd.
• Not unlike Blackberry, another revolutionary product that ended up belly up by the road after having cornered the “corporate” market.
• But back to Nextel and its tin-eared blue-collarness.
• Using Nextel telegraphed the most unglamourous of messages: it meant you were part of a fleet.
• At best, it was the phone of choice of lower middle management.
• You know, the chubby guys who run warehouses on the outskirts of town.
• The province of pastel-hued polo shirts with embroidered logos, $10 haircuts, baggy khaki pants and comfy, unironically scoffed rubber-sole shoes.
• Refrigerator technicians.
• UPS & FedEx drivers.
• Keyword: fleet.
• Nextel was the device of plumbers.
• Comfortably strapped with a belt clip, right next to a partial view of the wearer’s hairy butt crack while he fixes your kitchen sink.
• Light years away from San Francisco’s Mission District, NY’s Williamsburg and other hipsterlands, where the overgrown hair is displayed on the face.
• Problem is, Nextel failed to make itself look chic and desirable.
• It failed miserably at the mental game Apple plays so well: a mobile device is a fashion statement.
• So much so that it achieved the unthinkable: a brilliant, revolutionary product whose users are embarrassed to display, let alone use, in public.
• Had Nextel been marketed by them Cupertino snobs we would all be nexteling today.
• Mind you, I certainly don’t approve of this behavior: the fact that people wouldn’t want to be seen using a Nextel in public because it was the “phone of plumbers” speaks volumes of the pretentious, wannabe, stupidly “aspirational” and phony culture we live in.
• The “phony” pun is fully intended.
• A society in which people spend 600+ bucks every six months in a new shiny mobile object while procrastinating on healthcare coverage and their children’s education.