The VHS, DVD Marketing Story

Somewhere Sony founder Akio Morita is smiling. As the world baby steps to a completely digital format for movies, music and other entertainment, VHS is slowly being left behind for the DVD format.

No surprise here. But this news reminds me, and those old enough to remember, of VHS and Betamax fighting to become the videotape format of choice.

Betamax is a superior technology; Beta SP is still used by professional videographers. But what Betamax really needed was market share. Morita blames Betamax’ eventual defeat on insufficient licensing. Despite the fact that it was the better product, Betamax never achieved a large enough presence to create consumer preference. VHS had gravity and won the battle.

So what's the moral of the story? I’m a firm believer that the best marketing in the world will not make a sub par product successful. Betamax, however, reminds us that even the best product can be defeated by better marketing.

tags: public relations, PR, marketing, DVD, Target, Wal-Mart

Comments

[Jeremy Pepper]

And hubris. The revisionist history at Sony forget that they pulled the Apple card, where they first did not want to license the technology, then tried to price the license so high to make money off of other vendors.

VHS came in with a lower licensing price, and saturated the market. It's fun to see Sony pull the same stunt with its memory sticks, though.