Friday, June 3, 2011

Slingbox gets customers that they don't want

Let's look at this "Company X doesn't want me as a customer" from another point of view.

I've already ranted about how Foursquare doesn't want me as a customer because they stopped letting me earn mayorships on my not-so-smart phone, and how the Pavilions grocery store doesn't want me as a customer because they closed the nearby store.

It turns out that Slingbox does want me as a customer, but they don't have me as a customer (yet). But I hear their ads often, usually delivered by sports talk host Matt "Money" Smith. In the ads, Money talks about how he can use the Slingbox when he is away from home to watch sporting events on TV, just by using the Slingbox at his house, coupled with a device (computer or mobile) with an Internet connection.

Slingbox has been advertising its services in this way for years, despite the fact that they learned something about their customer base way back in 2007. As Stoney DeGeyter noted at the time:

My Slingbox lets me tap into my TiVo at home so I can watch my recorded programs. I am SlingBox's target audience. But recently SlingMedia, the makers of Slingbox, found something interesting. Between 35 and 45 percent of Slingbox users don't use it away from home.

So where do they use it? To learn this, go to DeGeyter's post. Then go to the Slingbox site. Do you see any mention of this way of using the Slingbox?
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