Driving Two Brands: Seagate’s Diana Cartwright on Seagate and Maxtor
At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Seagate‘s Senior Director of Marketing, Diana Cartwright, explains that Seagate is managing two well known brands: their own and Maxtor. Each, she says, serves in a very different and important capacity when it comes to managing personal data storage and use. “The new drives feel alive,” says Cartwright, at the Seagate/PodTech Bloghaus event. This is a Seagate podcast.
Transcript:
Host: Michael Johnson – PodTech News
Guest: Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
This is Michael Johnson, and we are here in the Seagate PodTech Bloghaus up here in the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada, I’m here with Diana Cartwright, Senior Director of marketing for the Seagate Branded Solutions, welcome to the Podcast, it’s great to see you here in Vegas.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
It’s good to see you again too.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
Okay, now tell me a little bit now; you’ve got a situation with Seagate where you have a couple of things going. Seagate acquired Maxtor and now you’ve got two brands and you’ve got two ideas out there and how are you going to manage that because as the Senior Director of marketing, you’ve got I think a situation which is kind of interesting, it sounds like a delightful challenge but tell me a little bit about how Seagate is going to manage the two brands?
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
Sure, actually it’s a really wonderful opportunity. So, with the Seagate Brand, obviously in the market place and the Maxtor brand, what we have announced here at the show is a whole new line of Seagate products that really allow you to have freedom with your digital content and on the Maxtor side, we still have a very award winning Maxtor One Touch Brand that is really all about backup, saving your data you know safeguarding it and what have you.
So what we’re really seeing is a real bifurcation of both brands and will they kind of branch in off into their own personalities if you will. So if you walk into our booth for example, on a show floor at CES, you’ll get to experience literally one side of the booth being freedom and talking about how you can have any time access to your data, wherever you go with the Seagate Brand and on the other side, really a digital reminder of safeguarding your data and making sure you back it up because every time you lose a piece of data you lose a piece of yourself.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
Now you’ve had Maxtor, you’ve worked in both worlds here and then moving them both forward. How should people think; let’s think one about the other, we’ll take it one at a time. So if they are thinking on the Seagate side of their brand…
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Right, okay.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
What kind of the things, what kinds of applications should someone say, just a practical way of thinking about Seagate?
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Oh sure, sure I’m liking it too. I had actually one person ask me one time well, why would I want to have both brands, I think which is a valid question and when you look at it today in a way that we have been able to draw this new line of products because they are very different. So for example, I constantly have something in my purse that I can transfer data on and now with the Seagate new FreeAgent line, I actually have products that I can actually take with me, I can actually sync things to my own 500 MegaByte space in the cloud, if you will with the Seagate Internet Drive, on my FreeAgent product, I have their FreeAgent Go product, I can actually just pop in my purse, it has some applications to go right on there, I can plug it into any laptop and have my computing environment with me at any time.
So it really provides me this freedom of movement, take my data regardless of it’s photos, work files, whatever with me wherever I want to go. On the Maxtor side, we really want to enforce, like we always have with Maxtor marketing campaigns if you will, the fact that you really need to have two copies of your data, no matter what, right? I mean people now have multiple digital devices, so in my home alone, I think we have three digital cameras, my daughter just take pictures incessantly, right? So, I can’t imagine what will happen if I lost those photos and so we need to keep two copies of everything, no matter what and that’s really what Maxtor is about.
Its if I lost those photos of my daughter’s birthday party, I’ll like lose a piece of myself and so when you walk in and you see the visualness of what we’ve been to create with the marketing campaigns, on the Seagate side, there is these beautiful almost like art, photos of people with photos that are files around them , it’s about you being on, it’s your stuff whenever you need it and they’re like I said, like art they’re just beautiful. On the Maxtor side, you’ll see these very interesting eye catching pictures of people kind of in their everyday environment with little digital pieces missing from them.
So it kind of makes you stop and think, when you do lose a piece of data, you lose a piece of yourself. So you need the backup, I would argue, and then I also like to take my data with me.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
Now, what’s the percentage out there right now of people that are not backing up and although we’ve talked a little bit about this last year with backup awareness month, and you’re doing some nice little things to make people aware that yes, they should back things up but what is the percentage of people that aren’t backing up out there right now, and it’s probably pretty major, I imagine.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
It’s pretty major, I think the last time we checked it was about over 50% of people who don’t backup, I think unfortunately it’s one of those things you don’t think about, we don’t think about it right? We buy our computer and we’re safe but you never know with natural disasters now, virus on your computer, you just need two copies of everything.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
Or the simple cup of coffee, deadly cup of coffee, don’t forget about that.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Oh yeah, on your laptop or something, can you imagine?
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
Yes, I can.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Oh oh, there is a story there.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
I know that, I mean we walk the streets and then in Down Town Urban Center asking people that they were backing up and surprising number of people, some people had, who’re really good about it because we are kind of in the heart of the technology area but a lot of people haven’t really thought about it. How should people really start to — how do you get that idea across, because it’s I know that the pictures are one thing but this is so much more is going to digital right now and folks that have the cameras and those folks that have they are just changing cards out right now because its still like film to them.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Right.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
How do you change that idea?
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Well, I think awareness is definitely the first and foremost thing in education. When we talk about over 50 people don’t backup, the people that do, I wonder if they do, because they at one point lost data. So really what we want to do is educate people so that they don’t lose data but we want to get upfront of that instead of behind it if you will.
So it’s really about education, so it’s really online, it’s working with our retailers and providing information on why it’s important and then of course with a lot of this new marketing campaign we have going on with these visual pictures of making people kind of stop and think, “Oh my gosh, yeah, these are pieces of my life”, I mean this is really about your memories, whether that’s a tax form you needed to keep or a birthday party invitation — I mean we all keep just — I keep the weirdest things sometimes. What would happen if I went to find them and they weren’t there and that I think is what we are really trying to convey with our marketing information.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
And I think it comes really as important as with the person of the year issue has kind of been convenient highlight to say that look you know, we are generating so much content right now, people are really starting to just produce more and more with YouTube or whatever but it’s not going to work and unless they have something to store it on and if they want to keep any of that, they are going to have to back it up somehow and I’m ashamed of the method that I haven’t backed up enough.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Oh say it as yourself.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
But I’m obviously going into this year definitely do it because more and more the kids are getting older and these are, as you’re saying these are the pieces of our lives that potentially could be going somewhere.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Forever, they could be gone forever.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
They could be gone forever.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Absolutely, and that’s one of the things we really focus on, with this dual brand strategy, it’s actually really nice, I mean because with the Maxtor stuff, with the legacy backup you got to have it, with this new creative assets if you will, if these photos of people having digital pieces missing from them, it is a really stop, “Wow! I really have some things here that if I lost, I would lose forever” and to your point about the Time Magazine that it’s all about you and having this reflection I think on the cover of Time Magazine, it really is when you look at people’s iPods, you can really tell a lot about somebody, by the music that they keep and the files that they have and it’s really about you and your stuff.
We look at the Seagate side, the brand we’re able to really tease them apart and show there is a completely different brands with different personalities and different solutions and so Seagate, yeah you have to back it up but now you got the freedom to take it with you wherever you want and we’ve been able to differentiate it also with it’s look and feel, the industrial design of the actual products themselves, they are beautiful, they have an amber glow that this cocoa brown; beautiful enclosure and between the two enclosure, there’s that amber light that glows and it kind of it breathes.
So it kind of comes in and out as a flash it breathes, so it’s just a beautiful piece of solution here, pieces (Ph) of technology, that allows you to go wherever you want and its kind of a fashion statement. I mean this is like, “Wow! Well, where did you get that?” “That’s really cool I want one of those.” So I think we’re creating something here that has immense opportunity.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
Diana Cartwright, Senior Director of marketing for Seagate Branded Solutions and we are here at CES here in the Seagate PodTech Bloghaus and if you like to check out some of the things, folks can go to the Seagate.com and there is a special area that’s showing some of the latest things that are being shown here at CES.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Absolutely, you can also go to maxtorsolutions.com and check out the Maxtor Solutions as well.
Michael Johnson – PodTech News
Diana Cartwright, thanks for being on the Podcast.
Diana Cartwright – Seagate
Thank you.
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CES BlogHaus 2008, CES Las Vegas - Consumer Electronics Show, Connected Social Media, Corporate, Seagate, Tech Conferences and Events, Technology
