Revenue Journal®

If you haven't been to the launch site for NXP, a spin-off from Philips, take a look - and prepare to be blown away.

The site is beautiful. Breathtaking, even. The Guy in the Green Shirt (below), who will talk to you while you're on the site, does a pretty good job of being professional and yet friendly, in a geeky/retro kind of way. So friendly, in fact, that when you return to the site he will welcome you back.

The Guy in the Green Shirt on the NXP site shows you the nifty MP3 radio you can win if you refer a lot of people to the site. Interesting viral approach.

The NXP site is filled with eye candy and an excellent online launch press kit. NXP has gone all-out for this launch, as evidenced by their media schedule, which is published right on the launch site.

The scale of this launch doesn't surprise me, partly because the VP of sales and marketing for NXP, Maria Marced, was previously with Intel, where she was the VP of marketing and sales - and general manager - of the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) division.

However, as beautiful as it is, this site contains a cautionary lesson to any CEO who is about to launch a major campaign.

Before we get to the lesson, we will need a paragraph of background:

Philips recently sold 80% of Philips Semiconductors to a bunch of investors (including the ever-eager KKR), for $4.35 billion. The new company has now changed its name to NXP, which stands for "Next Experience." Not bad. Certainly an improvement over names chosen recently by other semiconductor spinoffs, most of which "sound like a restaurant at a beach resort," according to Michael Kanellos at ZDNet. NXP will sell chips for digital televisions, multimedia cellphones, electronic passports, and digital cash and identification systems. By the end of the second quarter this year, NXP had racked up $3 billion in sales and ranked as the world's #11 chip maker, according to IC Insights. Under the guidance of CEO Frans van Houten, the company grew 19 percent in the last two years, and had a pretax profit of $393 million last year. It grew 12 percent in the first half of 2006, compared to overall semiconductor growth of 9% during the same period.

Sounds good, right? So what's the lesson to be drawn from this launch?

NXP forgot to ask the most important question in marketing and sales:

Who is our buyer, and what will he want to do next?

This campaign is obviously aimed at consumers and the press. Are they the buyers of NXP semiconductors? No.

Let's say you're a buyer of consumer electronic products (a safe assumption). Let's say you're really impressed with the NXP launch site. What can you do? You can tell your friends to visit the site, in the hopes of winning that nifty MP3 radio. Then what? Will you go to your local Best Products store and demand to look only at the high-definition TVs with the NXP chip inside? Not likely. This is a revenue dead end.

Who does buy semiconductors? Manufacturers of digital products, obviously.

So let's pretend we're a design engineer at a manufacturing company. We go to the launch site. We click around. Not once are our needs mentioned, nor are we invited to do anything. Maybe there's something on their website. We click over to the NXP website. Nothing here that speaks to us directly, either. I don't have time for this, my project is behind schedule. I've got to get back to work. We click away.

The NXP home page does have a section aimed specifically at the design engineer. But, it's hidden from him. At the top of the left nav are the words, "I want to." If, by chance, the engineer had clicked on that link, he would have seen choices that addressed his needs: "Find a component that suits my needs; find detailed information about a known component; find alternative components; understand how to use components in an application"; etc. Once he was in this section, he would have found the navigation to be logical and helpful. Too bad he gave up before he found this information. There is also a product section, listed under "I want to" in the left nav. If the design engineer wasn't in such a hurry, he might have clicked on this section. The point is, nothing specifically addresses his needs. The site is all about NXP.

How could such a major launch ignore the buyer?

It's easy. I've seen it happen many times. When there are investors, top managers, and marketers with previous "consumer market splash" experience, everyone gets so excited about "branding" that they barely notice the customer asking, "What about me?" It's like the big shots decide to throw a huge party to honor somebody. But, with all the planning, running around, and general excitement, they forget who the party is for.

NXP could have easily rectified all of this, so that when the guest of honor showed up, he would have been welcomed rather than ignored. The home page for the new brand included five links at the top: Executive Management; The New Brand; Press Kit; Leave Comments; Share this Web Site. And, at the bottom, a link called NXP Company Web Site. They should have added one more link on this page called: For Design Engineers (or, so it matched the other links, they could have simply called it "NXP Products"). A design engineer would have clicked on that link; he would have then found himself on the "I want to" page or the Product Information page. Both of these pages contain helpful product information and are easy to navigate.

Next time you launch a new product, website, or campaign, make sure you ask yourself the most important question: Who is our buyer, and what will he want to do next?

Map out the steps. Make it easy for your buyer to walk down the primrose path to the completed sale.