If you've ever played the guitar, you'll know the amazing creation - the Robot Guitar - from Gibson, will be an important product, regardless of its overall success as far as sales go.
Let's talk a little about the guitar itself before getting into a few marketing lessons.
First of all the body of the guitar is the standard Gibson Les Paul. That's about all that's standard about it though, from there, everything else is changed.
There's a computer embedded in the guitar body on the back, which on the pull of a button sends commands to the bridge and tail piece of the guitar. All a musician has to do is strum on the guitar strings and information from the vibrations and string tension is sent to the processor located in the neck of the guitar from the bridge and tail piece.
Then what's really fun, the pegs, which on this guitar are motorized, then start to be tuned by the computer in the guitar body. Amazingly, the strings are part of the computerized guitar network.
Below there's a video I included to show how it exactly works. It's really cool!
Gibson Robot Guitar
All you have to do to initiate the action is pull out a knob and then strum on the strings. That's all it takes to change keys on the guitar. The accuracy is also fantastic also, as it comes within 2 cents of the 1,200 cents that make up an octave.
Now for the importance of this product from a marketing and branding perspective.
It may surprise you, but it won't matter how many of these guitars are sold. The "cool" factor is already out on this, and has made a big impact on the Gibson brand. It's similar to Apple (AAPL) and the iPhone or iPod.
As a matter of fact, the company only plans on an initial run of 4,000 guitars worldwide. If every one of them sold, it would only come to almost $10,000,000, at the MSRP of $2,499. (The street price will probably be about $2,000.) Not bad, but not that big of a dent in the overall scheme of Gibson.
What Gibson is obviously doing is creating a built-in scarcity. But that's not all. They're also focusing on the professional musician here. If they get them to embrace the new technology, from there it would filter down to the amateur guitar player, which is where their real money would be made.
But there's more to the strategy. Simply bringing out the Robot Guitar brings something to the company that can't be measured. It puts them in a leadership position in the minds of consumers. It could potentially lead to all sorts of products coming out of the company based on this one initial trial; no matter if it sells big or not.
One last thing - branding. We've heard branding is dead. Now let me ask you a question: Would you buy the robotic guitar from Gibson, or would you buy it from an actual robotic guitar competitor named Transperformance.
If you've ever played guitar, the vast majority of respondents would answer Gibson. The reason is Gibson stands for something, and that something is "branded" in the minds of its customers and potential customers. Branding hasn't gone away. This is one case study that proves it.
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