Re: CompUSA's Apple Users Open House
Re: CompUSA's Apple Users Open House
- Subject: Re: CompUSA's Apple Users Open House
- From: Douglas Small <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:41:33 -0500
I would tend to agree with Paul that this event was aimed at User
Groups alone. We had four members attend the event in Brandon (east
Tampa), FL. It was an hour drive for two of us, and almost a two hour
drive for another couple. The business unit there seemed totally
unprepared. There were no refreshments or give-aways as found on their
circular. The spot for the Mac Mini was an empty hole.
We did spend some time with the Apple Solutions Specialist, Donnie
Fluty. He gave us some Apple logo'd items for meetings, and we hope to
have him in as a presenter soon. If there was any kind of pitch, it
was for .Mac.
I came away feeling somewhat flat. We bought a few small things, and
got a 10 % discount. We were told that two other MUGs had come earlier
in the evening. Inasmuch as we are midway between Orlando and Tampa,
it is a real effort to get to either market. I am not sure I saw any
point in having the Open House.
On Feb 25, 2005, at 6:01 AM, Paul Richards wrote:
I would like to compare notes with others regarding CompUSA's Apple
Users Open House held on February 24th. Did you attend? Was it well
attended at your local store? Was your users group actively involved
in any fashion? Do you have any other comments about it?
I am very grateful to the Apple Solutions Specialist and the general
manager of my local CompUSA for allowing the Syracuse Macintosh Users
Group to set up a table and rotate nine of our senior volunteers at a
prominent spot on the edge of the Apple product area. We had people on
hand throughout the event to promote our group and to help answer
customer questions about the products there. We had quite a few of our
members stop by to check out the offerings in response to the event
announcements I forwarded to them. We also helped some people who are
not members, who just happened to come by and had not heard about the
open house, and got a couple of possible membership nibbles in the
process.
On the other hand, I was very dissapointed to learn that there was
little or no promotion of this event outside the users group circles.
Although there were ads for the iMac, iBook and iPod product lines in
CompUSA's current sales circular, I saw no mention of this "Open
House" anywhere within its pages. No mention anywhere else outside of
those that came to me over the Internet in one way or another either.
No radio, no TV, no print media anywhere that I could learn of.
I feel that Apple has again used users groups as a targeted marketing
channel and is badly missing on the bigger picture. The members of my
group already own Apple products. We are not going to gain them any
market share. If Apple and CompUSA had instead worked hand in hand
with users groups starting at the national level, and put a little
more money into promoting this in outside media, we could have helped
them broaden there target audience considerably. At the same time, the
users groups could also benefit from the outside exposure, making it a
potential growth opportunity for all involved. Why is it that they
don't seem to see that?
What do others think?
Doug Small
Lakeland Area Mac User Group
Ambassador
http://homepage.mac.com/flmug/
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