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21 The Life of a Cult Object Before, During, & After an Ethnographic Study: The HP 12c Financial Calculator • Bernard Cova
Matthew Rothman bought an HP 12c financial calculator for his first job out of college in 1989. Years later, he still has the same calculator. And he still uses it constantly, just like thousands of other 12c enthusiasts. “Whenever I switch jobs, I just peel the old business card that is on the back and tape my newest one on,” says Mr. Rothman, head of quantitative equity strategies at Barclays Capital in New York” (Peterson 2011).
Introduction
Around 30 years after the launch of the 12c calculator by Hewlett-Packard (HP), it’s still commonplace for financial analysts filing into a conference room to set down their calculators next to their papers and cellphones. Indeed, the 12c, which costs around $70 (versus about $10 for a standard calculator), remains HP’s best-selling calculator of all time. Sales of the device, which debuted in 1981, continued to grow even after HP introduced more advanced products as well as a 12c iPhone application, which replicates all of the calculator’s functions. The slim and rectangular 12c, which comes in black and white, is just over 5 inches wide by 3 inches high. It runs on an unconventional operating system called “Reverse Polish Notation” (RPN)1, which eschews parentheses and equal signs in an effort to increase calculation efficiency (Figure 21.1). In other words, the HP 12c is a cult object with an unusually long commercial life. Like the cult movie Casablanca (Eco 1986) and the cult scooter Handbook of Anthropology in Business, edited by Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland, xx–xx. ©2014 Left Coast Press Inc. All rights reserved. 448
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Figure 21.1. The original HP 12c, launched in 1981.
Vespa (Eco and Calabrese 1996), we define a cult object as an object that creates a world completely structured in a manner such that the fans can cite episodes and protagonists of the life of the object as if they were aspects of the life of the fan her/himself. This chapter describes a multicountry ethnographic study as an episode in the life of this cult object, tracing its history before, during, and up to 10 years after the study. It illustrates the various interests at stake, the outcomes of the ethnographic project, and its lasting impacts. However fantastic the 12c has been for HP, this kind of cult object raises strategy and marketing management questions for the company. Collective powers are projected onto cult objects (Schiermer 2011), and its societal dynamics are such that it often transcends (or runs counter to) the intentions of its creator (Cova and Svanfeldt 1993). “Like a sorcerer’s apprentice, he has created something that escapes him” (Maffesoli 1992:124). The end effect is that the product becomes an icon, its functional dimension disappearing behind its aesthetic meaning. Thus, firms seeking to regain control want studies that can help them understand the phenomenon. Quantitative research can’t achieve this goal (Belk 2006), which is why companies have come to rely, sometimes grudgingly, on qualitative and even ethnographic studies. The Problem in 2001, According to HP
In 2001, HP was a multinational company that had embedded its competitive advantage for more than 30 years in its ability to repeatedly take a technological leap forward. Recognized as one of the world’s most in-
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novative companies in its sector, the company established a number of global standards, including the 12c calculator, launched in 1979, which has been adopted by financial specialists as an indispensable professional accessory. However, at the beginning of the new millennium, the calculator’s performance was very limited compared with the new models that had come out in the previous 20 years, notably HP products such as the 17b or 20c, which were supposed to replace the 12c but failed to do so. All efforts to withdraw the 12c from the market encountered strong resistance from customers. Similarly, any effort to alter it on an aesthetic or technical level was boycotted; HP had to return to square one every time, much as Coca-Cola had to do after its misfortunes launching New Coke.2 HP was even forced to lower the new software version’s speed and performance to accommodate characteristics of the previous 12c version. In the end, the 12c became the global top seller in its category. HP Financial Services’ marketing and new products department, based at the time in Grenoble (France), compared the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining the 12c in its product range (Table 21.1). HP’s marketing and new products department—much like any entity that considers technological innovation a core value for its brand— struggled to deal with this extraordinary success. In-house brainstorming sessions carried out in conjunction with financial specialists identified certain key factors. The 12c • enabled a rapid visualization and summary of customers’ financial calculation;
Advantages
Disadvantages
The HP 12c, one of a kind Launched in September 1981; 20 years old! Expensive for its market segment World’s bestselling financial calculator Price-inelastic; any change harms sales Quantitative market research shows no alterations should be made to the product Consumers love it, consider it beautiful
But . . . . Calculator looks old Technology is obsolete, too costly to maintain under today’s standards Competitors getting better every day Need to be proactive in defending market share and leadership HP wants to be considered an evolving, dynamic brand
Table 21.1. The 12c’s advantages and disadvantages to HP in 2000.
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• fit into a coat pocket and was therefore easy to carry; • used specific RPN, which was hard to learn but performed well; and • was recommended by business school professors from North America to Europe and South America and used in their lessons. HP was aware that 12c customers tended to repurchase the product whenever their current calculator came to the end of its working life; even owning several was not uncommon. In part because of the behavior of these loyal customers, HP’s marketing and new products department agreed to abandon its customary market study approaches. Members of the department asked whether, in today’s world, numbers and demographics could communicate how consumers behave toward a product. They shared the view that the only way to leverage the 12c’s history was by exploring the product’s market “life” by understanding consumers’ experience with the 12c. HP’s marketing and new products department contacted me, and I advised them to consult Argonautes, France’s premier techno-marketing company, founded by the anthropologist Dominique Desjeux. For the department, this nontraditional approach was risky and raised several challenges. The research sample was accused of being insignificant. Senior management was doubtful about the value of the research, in part because observing one person costs 10 times more than quantitative research and twice as much as observing focus groups. Moreover, inhouse procurement procedures required a minimum of three competitive bids to get on HP’s list of approved providers, but a limited number of qualitative research agencies able to develop this kind of approach existed, adding procurement irregularities to the list of difficulties managers were already facing. After several meetings with Argonautes and me that allowed managers to better understand the potential contribution of an ethnographic approach, HP’s marketing and new products department—having no other choice!—decided to hire Argonautes for a study of the top four global markets in its sector to try and understand what meaning the 12c had for its enthusiastic users. This involved visiting financial specialists in their workplaces, spending days with them, and monitoring everything they did with the 12c: how they would use it at the beginning of the day, how the devices would be transferred from one worker to another, whether people took it with them on a trip, and so on. This first stage of work was supplemented by onsite interviews discussing the product. Observations
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were structured around four dimensions: consumers’ shared experience with the 12c; how the 12c was used; the 12c’s application in social interaction; and consumers’ mental representations of the 12c. HP’s marketing and new products department expected the ethnographic research to enhance their understanding of the 12c by creating awareness of how customers live with the 12c as well as providing further insight into general trends in calculator use above and beyond this product. The research focus specifically revealed risks surrounding certain “untouchable” aspects of the 12c that consumers did not wish to see changed in future product innovations and gave strategic direction for the next-generation 12c, including a possible top-grade version. In return, the project created a precedent in the way that HP marketed its products: and itself. Research by Argonautes
HP decided to conduct an ethnographic study in four countries: the 12c’s largest market (United States); the second largest market (Brazil); a big market for HP calculators in general (Norway); and a reference country (France). Seven to nine interviews (including related observations) were conducted in interviewees’ offices or homes in each of these countries. Interviews were not restricted to finance specialists alone and included people between the ages of 27 and 55. Interviews and observations were carried out by various trained ethnographers speaking the local language. The length of the interviews and related observations varied, depending on the contents and consumers’ level of cooperation, from one hour to half a day, and explored these questions: • What was the 12c’s itinerary from purchase to use: where was it stored, exactly who used it, who had bought it (as a gift, for example), was the family involved, etc.? • What practices were involved in the 12c’s use (website forums, collector and user clubs); what objects were associated with it (suitcase, suit, shirt, car, etc.); what spaces were associated with it (living room, office, street, etc.); what uses were prescribed, permitted, or prohibited? • What were the symbolic representations of the 12c? In this chapter I provide a brief overview of the findings related to the life of the 12c and practices surrounding its use followed by details on the meanings users invested in the 12c.
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Itinerary and Practices Involving the 12c
Most users who purchased a 12c for themselves already had knowledge, familiarity, and experience with the calculator. To want a 12c, potential customers had to know and like it already, meaning they had been in a position where they had to use it. This is because the 12c was not conducive to “immediate” or spontaneous use; as one respondent noted, people rarely had a spontaneous need for the 12c. Rather, in many financial companies it was regular practice to provide new employees with a 12c, so that introducing it and requiring that it be used was creating a social norm. Initiation was crucial under such circumstances: there was neither immediate accessibility nor instant satisfaction, but the reward and gratification of hard effort. Once you get a feel for the RPN, it gets under your skin! It takes a little getting used to, but it’s like driving on the right or left side of the road. It depends on which way you start; if you change, it takes a bit of a learning curve. For the uninitiated, RPN is an incomprehensible mystery that, for most, can only be mastered after a long initiation period; anyone who got past this initial hurdle, however, found it a powerful and elegant tool that was ultimately easy to use. It seemed entirely logical, in part because of the way it avoided extra symbols and parentheses, reducing the number of keystrokes required for complex expressions. Once consumers got used to RPN, it was hard for them to change to another calculation system. The positive image of the 12c and the personal attachment users formed may have been proportionate to people’s investment in the learning process, specifically the final gratification of manipulating the device at will. The 12c was never the only tool that users wielded for their calculation needs. The 12c appears to complement applications like Excel, which have the advantage of offering more precise calculations. The 12c did not disappear with computerization, but it did assume another role because was appreciated for its other qualities: simplicity of use, rapidity, accessibility, and mobility. Users tended to position the 12c between ordinary calculators and other technical calculators that they described as overly sophisticated. One of my colleagues has got a 17b and a 19b. I’ve tried both, but I wouldn’t change my 12c for them. My HP is simple, nice, and it’s got all the functions I need. It doesn’t need to be more advanced.
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Figure 21.2. “My 15-year-old HP 12c.” Photo courtesy of Hale Stewart.
The 12c gradually acquired the status of a lifecycle object, particularly observed when users acquired one at the beginning of their careers and kept it as they rose through the ranks (Figure 21.2). While new uses were different from the original one, the 12c was still being used for professional purposes and was being integrated into people’s private sphere among their other objects of affection, following them through various phases of their life. It’s not ugly, it’s not looking good either. I like the design. It hasn’t changed over the years. The 12c was clearly a major conversational tool that facilitated and galvanized exchanges. It had become the object that people would systematically take with them to meetings or negotiations. You don’t go to meetings without your HP. Lots of times in a meeting, the CEO will ask you a question, and he expects an answer immediately: not tomorrow, not when you go back to your computer and think about it. Without the 12c, I don’t know how long you would have lasted in the company. For a broker to appear professional, he needs all the proper tools to make his appointments run smoothly. The 12c is the right tool! The 12c was also a “hot item”: owners worried that it might be stolen or that borrowers would not return it, and as a result tended to engrave or carve their name or nickname on it, “like a jewel” (Figure 21.3). Many people we interviewed would loan their 12c for a short time, but never for
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Figure 21.3. “My HP 12c.” Photo courtesy of Gillis Heller.
an entire day; many ritualistically made sure it was on their desk before they left at the end of every day. Representations of the 12c: A Plurality of Meanings
Dominique Desjeux and I offered a number of parallel interpretations for this ethnographic study. These were discussed with HP’s marketing and new products department managers to emphasize the fact that with ethnographic studies, “[m]arketing executives and managers need to reject the idea that there is ‘one truth to be discovered’ and accept the basic assumption that all empirical phenomena are open to multiple interpretations” (Moisander and Valtonen 2012:257). Far from being a simple universal tool with a very specific meaning, by 2001 the 12c had become a polyglot product given very different meanings across the world, and diverse interpretive frameworks (authenticity, generation, sustainability, tribalism, and so on) were needed to comprehend these meanings. In Brazil (Sao Paulo), it was a cult object with strong connection value. Here, the 12c had become a stable reference in an otherwise constantly changing environment, something that people would bring out as part of a professional rite of passage so they could feel they belonged to the (largely imaginary) community of Wall Street financiers. Learning to use the 12c required sacrifice. Keeping it maintained required enthusiasm. In the United States (New York), the 12c had a high use value, explained in part by the way that professionals and consultants prescribed it as a market standard (“the right tool”; “the real thing”) thanks to its clever
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operating system, the ease with which it could be used to make customer presentations, its useful size, and aesthetically pleasing traditional golden borders. In Norway (Oslo), the 12c was considered a user-friendly (and even rustic) object that companies would purchase on behalf of their employees. It was much praised for a timeless design reflecting stability and solidity, making this a natural working tool. It also symbolized a break from the concept of infinite progress or hyper-choice because, despite being relatively limited, it satisfied most everyone’s needs, as opposed to other new products deemed overly complicated. The operating system was also conducive to users adapting and reappropriating the device. Last, people liked the “click” sound that the 12c made when turned off. In France (Paris), the 12c was perceived as a mixture of the three aforementioned countries: it was viewed as a simple but useful device with a strong connection value that was combined with a relatively French appreciation for the status gained by owning this kind of product. Despite the many different meanings attributed to the 12c, users worldwide agreed that it should be left alone. Its tangible and intangible “untouchables,” to be retained for any new version, included its key click, golden plate, handy format, easy access to key functions, RPN, and programming capabilities. Above and beyond these untouchables, the idea of HP Financial Services’ marketing and new products department—even before starting its ethnographic research—was to capitalize on the 12c’s success by launching a top-grade version that could almost be classified as a luxury product. Toward this end, it took on board the following strategic points evoked during the research project: • Don’t position the new product offer as something “new”; • Respect the 12c’s identity as a product characterized by its stability, authenticity, legitimacy, and the feeling of power it gives owners; • Develop the 12c’s dual positioning as a situational product (customer meetings) in the United States and as a bridge to an imaginary financial community in the rest of the world.
Strategies Developed by HP (Post-2001) Limited Series
Based on the study findings, HP’s marketing and new products department imagined several strategic operations to take advantage of the 12c’s
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surprising success. Options ranged from the modest (not changing anything) to the ambitious (creating an autonomous 12c business unit): • No change/milk the cash cow • Special 12c/limited edition including design changes, packaging changes (box, case, etc.), and communication changes • 12c with a distribution partner/co-marketing • 12c as a brand range in finance/umbrella brand • 12c cobranded with a name from outside the world of finance • 12c as a specific business unit/autonomous approach including specific range of products, partners, and markets. Some of these options seemed too difficult to develop within HP’s corporate culture. For example, the option of having a 12c brand name for a range exceeding this one calculator (possibly having other calculators, accessories, and textbooks) required a major commitment by HP’s top management to move the corporate culture away from technologically driven growth. Instead, HP launched a limited series bearing the code name “12cx” and featured limited quantities for a limited period of time. There would only be one or two possibilities for changing the original settings, with the product positioning now highlighting stability, authenticity, and reassurance in a fast-moving world. One advantage would be that the same distribution channels could be followed. To ensure that the target audience of cult consumers would accept this higher-end version of the 12c, the idea developed by HP’s marketing and new products department managers was not to present this as an HP initiative but as something driven by legitimate users (academics, business writers, advisors to international institutions, so-called financial wizards) who wanted to change the 12c. In this way, HP would appear to be responding to a kind of grassroots initiative driven by charismatic cult users, and the company could be construed as nothing more than the party adopting and generalizing their initiative. To this end, it had to invent a story that looked consistent with reality even if it was not “real.” This interpretation took some elements of the 12c’s history and wove them into a plausible scenario. The idea was to create a story lacking any real names or places, one where consumers could project their own imagination (thereby maintaining some degree of mystery) reflecting their own trajectories. The story was to be told in a way that enabled a modicum of identification and “translation” in each culture (Brazil, France, United States, etc.). Local groups would ascribe their own detailed meaning to it.
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Nonetheless, this thinking about the limited series did not translate into HP’s actually launching anything in 2002, but demonstrated instead the path that would have to be taken when designing the 12c Platinum, whose launch was programmed for 2003. Launching the 12c Platinum in 2003
The launching of the 12c Platinum in 2003 can be analyzed within the wider framework of retromarketing (Brown 2001) that was very fashionable at the time among automakers. The new model was for all intents and purposes a clone of the never-ending 12c. Against all expectations, however, it did not replace its predecessor, which HP continued to manufacture. In part, the 12c Platinum owed its existence to the original version’s difficulties in finding processors. Above all, it allowed HP to perpetuate a successful model without upsetting traditionally minded users. The only real differences were that the HP 12c Platinum’s first model was a dark blue box with a gray background, followed by a black model in a chrome framework (Figure 21.4). The new processor was also much faster (up to 10 times) than its predecessor. There was a major difference in the ways that data could be entered in the HP 12c and HP 12c Platinum: the HP 12c only had one mode (RPN), whereas the HP 12c Platinum had two: RPN and the more traditional algebraic mode. Like all the latest HP models, manufacturing was subcontracted to the Chinese company Kinpo. The 12c Platinum caused panic among 12c fans, who temporarily feared that it would displace the old model. This led to a run on stocks of the original version—renamed the 12c Gold—even as HP advertising Figure 21.4. The 12c Platinum, launched in 2003.
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about the new model helped to launch Platinum sales. As a result, total 12c sales boomed in 2003 and in 2004. Moreover, fans of the cult object would often become double consumers. As one financial specialist reviewed on Amazon: “Many people wonder: Should I get the HP 12c Platinum or the old standby, the HP 12c Gold. Personally, I’d recommend getting both. Like most things, each model has advantages and disadvantages, but both are still among the finest feats in engineering in terms of a calculator.”3 The 12c’s 25th Anniversary in 2006
The Platinum’s successful launch seems to have bolstered the 12c’s status as a cult object to the extent that HP abandoned its functional traditions and decided in 2006 to celebrate the 12c’s 25th anniversary. HP introduced a special edition of HP 12c Platinum, commemorating the 25th anniversary of its “iconic consumer electronics product that has remained virtually unchanged since its debut” (from the HP website at the time). A further celebration of this milestone was the “Tales of the Amazing HP 12c Calculator Contest,” a nationwide competition in the United States asking entrants to submit their most creative and incredible real-life HP 12c calculator success stories. Reproducing ideas highlighted during the ethnographic study, HP began looking for real stories that could elucidate people’s perception of the 12c: “If you’ve got a good story to tell using the HP 12c as a student, instructor, or professional, enter the contest to win an HP 37-inch LCD flat-panel TV or other prizes.” The contest ran from February 10 to May 1, 2006, and was open to US residents who owned or had owned the HP 12c calculator. The winning essay was “The Boon of B-School,” written by Srinivasa Rajan, East Brunswick, NJ. On the HP website at that time, the following paragraph was posted: At Columbia Business School in 1999, we were required to have and taught to use a 12c. When we started the hardest course of all—Business Finance—we were taught to use MS Excel for large valuation projects. For the final exam, we had laptops and were given Excel files with the annual financial statements of a complex fictional company to create a sale price valuation. Unfortunately, as soon as the test started, my laptop died! There was no spare computer available, so the attending TA gave me a printed copy of the financial statements and blank exam booklet. I took the test with only my 12c and a pencil. 24 hours later,
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grades were published, and thanks to my 12c I had earned an A! Despite the “advantage” of using laptops and Excel, only seven others matched my A-grade! After hearing my story, the professor made 12c’s mandatory for students! The 12c’s 30th Anniversary in 2011
HP did the same thing in 2011 for the 30th anniversary of its cult object, bringing out a special and limited edition launched at an evening gala in New York. A classic 12c financial calculator was marketed for this occasion as a special 30th anniversary limited-edition release. Each HP 12c 30th Anniversary Edition calculator came stamped with a unique production number. Displayed in an elegant gift box, it became the perfect gift for any business professional, student, or collector (Figure 21.5). For the occasion, HP opened a mini-website dedicated to the evening, where people could order these “collectors’ items.” On August 30, 2011, HP held a 30th anniversary celebration for the 12c calculator at Harry’s Cafe & Steak in New York, a favorite haunt of traders who attended to celebrate or commiserate over the state of the market.
Figure 21.5. The 12c Limited Edition 30th Anniversary version.
Cult Objects & Their Ethnographies
The story of the life of the HP 12c before, during, and after the Argonautes’ ethnographic research shows how the marketing, design, and product planning of a cult object (Belk and Tumbat 2005) could benefit from
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ethnographic insights and how marketing and new product development have to be “moderate” or “humble” not to turn consumers away from evolution/new versions of cult objects. The HP 12c is not an isolated case. Other products benefit from the same cultish fame and the same plurality of meanings ascribed to them. As I have written elsewhere (Cova and Cova 2002), some cult objects have lived through a period of deterioration followed by resurrection, surrounded by what can be called “satanic myth” in the deterioration phase and myth in the rebirth, such as the Lomo LC-A camera launched in Russia during the 1980s by the Lomo corporation, which from 1914 onwards had been a leading maker of optical instruments. In the early 1990s, the camera was considered cheap and not very good: pictures came out with dark edges and were blurred, distorted, abstract. Yet some Austrian students who discovered a Lomo LC-A in a shop in Prague somehow found all this quite exciting, leading to the birth of what became known as Lomography. What started as a small community of friends became an astounding analog movement featuring more than a million fans devoted to the cultish Lomo camera. A second category of cult objects have disappeared from the market and then reappeared in the form of retro products and brands (Hemetsberger et al. 2011). This is the case of retro cars such as the Mini and the New Beetle, for example, and specifically the Fiat 500 (Pattuglia 2011). Between 1957 and 1975, Fiat sold as many as 3.8 million Fiat 500 cars. Then, the Fiat 500 continued its life outside of the market. However, on July 4, 2007, exactly 50 years after the launch of the first 500, the Fiat Group launched the third millennium edition. The new Fiat 500 was designed to conjure up the past, but definitely without being a copy or an unimaginative revival. “The new Fiat belongs to everybody” was the claim that wrapped up the commercial and the campaign, emphasizing the capability of everyone to ascribe his or her own meaning to the car, based on individual history. In addition, cult objects had been ironically summed up in the advertising campaign featuring the Fiat 500 together with other magic little items, such as the Bic cigarette lighter and the Rubik’s cube (Pattuglia 2011). Finally, certain cult objects forming a third category have already totally disappeared from the market and gained cult status after that. This is the case of the East German Trabant automobile (Berdahl 2000). The Trabant was designed as the communist answer to the Volkswagen Beetle, but it was built on the cheap and altered little before production
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halted in 1991. This vehicle, known affectionately as the Trabi or perhaps less affectionately as the “Rennpappe” (“racing cardboard”) due to its flimsy bodywork, was often the butt of jokes regarding its quality. The anthropologist Berdahl (1999, 2000) talked of a “special word” used by former East German citizens to describe their relationships to the vehicle: “hasslieben,” or a mixture of loving and hating. Soon after reunification, a nostalgic fixation on the Trabi, as part of a broader wave of nostalgia for certain aspects of the GDR (ostalgia), emerged (Berdahl 2000). The Trabi then moved from the jokebooks of 1989 to a new status as the “cult automobile” of the late 1990s. An Internet search returned a list of 130 fan clubs for the Trabant around Germany and others throughout Europe and in the United States. For each of the three categories of cult objects, ethnographic research allows one to delve deeply into their multiplicity of meanings, both personal and social (Leigh et al. 2006). It details what practices are involved in their use, what objects are associated with them, and what spaces are associated with them. It shows how people gain a sense of authenticity in the consumption context via the cult object and its ownership; what are tangible and intangible “untouchables,” to be retained for any new version of this object. However, the use of ethnographic methods in commercial settings for understanding the life of such cult objects is not disseminated via writing because the insights gained are applied to a company process of marketing. This chapter proposes a unique view on this phenomenon through the life of a cult object before, during, and after an ethnographic research. Conclusion
In conclusion, it is worth noting that HP carried out this ethnographic study on the 12c because it did not see how any of the other methods that it used customarily could offer an alternative. Managers in HP’s marketing and new products department greeted the study findings with great interest, having worked together with us to develop a host of potential strategies for the 12c, ranging from limited series production to an independent business unit. Senior managers from HP’s Calculators division only implemented a few of their marketing specialists’ recommendations, however, reflecting both a lack of confidence in the findings of a purely qualitative study (the company generally relies on quantitative data) and a misunderstanding of the cultural role that objects and brands play in so-
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ciety today (Kornberger 2010). In reality, the 12c Platinum’s launch should be construed as a compromise between the novel ideas being conveyed in the ethnographic study and the much more traditional strategic approach that top management decided to follow. Senior managers’ resistance to the proposal that the new 12c be launched as something driven by its legitimate users meant that all throughout 2002, no really new thinking took place in this area. It was only in 2003 that plans were relaunched for a new 12c, culminating in the 12c Platinum, which only adopted some of the ideas contained in the initial proposal. Having said that, HP Calculator’s top management also ended up—more or less unintentionally—giving birth to a cult object strategy that would ultimately mobilize its fan communities to celebrate the 12c’s 25th (and later 30th) anniversary. In this sense, the ethnographic study undertaken in 2001 paved the way for HP to adopt a new vision of the 12c, even if the company’s senior managers never converted fully to ethnographic or cultural approaches to branding and marketing. References Belk, Russell W., ed. 2006. Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing, Cheltenham/Northampton, UK: Edwar Elgar. Belk, Russell W., and Gülnur Tumbat. 2005. “The Cult of Macintosh.” Consumption, Markets and Culture 8(3):205–17. Berdahl, Daphne. 1999. “‘ (N)Ostalgie’ for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things.” Ethnos 64(2):192–211. _____. 2000. “‘Go, Trabi, Go!’: Reflections on a Car and Its Symbolization over Time.” Anthropology and Humanism 25(2):131–41. Brown, Stephen. 2001. Marketing: The Retro Revolution. London: Sage. Cova, Bernard, and Véronique Cova. 2002. “Tribal Marketing: The Tribalisation of Society and its Impact on the Conduct of Marketing.” European Journal of Marketing 36(5/6):595–620. Cova, Bernard, and Christian Svanfeldt. 1993. “Societal Innovations and the Postmodern Aestheticization of Everyday Life.” International Journal of Research in Marketing 10(3):297–310. Eco, Umberto. 1986. “Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage.” In Travels in Hyper Reality, edited by Umberto Eco, 197–211. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich. Eco, Umberto, and Omar Calabrese, eds. 1996. The Cult of Vespa. Milan: Lupetti. Hemetsberger, Andrea, Christine Kittinger-Rosanelli, and Barbara Mueller. 2011. “‘Grandma’s Fridge is Cool’—The Meaning of Retro Brands for Young Consumers.” In Advances in Consumer Research Volume 38, edited by Darren W. Dahl, Gita V. Johar, and Stijn M. J. van Osselaer, 242–8. Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research. Kornberger, Martin. 2010. Brand Society. How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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notes 1 Reverse Polish Notation is a way of expressing arithmetic expressions that avoids the use of brackets to define priorities for evaluation of operators. In ordinary notation, one might write (3 + 5) * (7 – 2); the brackets tell us that we have to add 3 to 5, then subtract 2 from 7, and multiply the two results together. In RPN, the numbers and operators are listed one after another, and an operator always acts on the most recent numbers in the list. The numbers can be thought of as forming a stack, like a pile of plates. The most recent number goes on the top of the stack. An operator takes the appropriate number of arguments from the top of the stack and replaces them by the result of the operation. In this notation, the above expression would be 3 5 + 7 2 – * 2 On April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola, in an attempt to stay ahead of its rival Pepsi-Cola, decided to scrap the original Coca-Cola and introduced New Coke in its place. A few days later, the production of original Coke was stopped. This joint decision has since been referred to as “the biggest marketing blunder of all time.” Sales of New Coke were low and public outrage was high at the fact that the original was no longer available. It soon became clear that Coca-Cola had little choice but to bring back its original brand and formula. The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people (See Roberto Goizueta, CEO in 1985, speak about this piece of Coke’s history, at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BmQs8g9ytRA). 3 See the review at http://www.amazon.com/HP-113394-12C-Platinum-Calculator/product-reviews/B00009WNV9.