Early PC Marketing

Early PC Marketing – All The Players

In the olden days, otherwise referred to as the 80s, I was fascinated with the first Personal Computers and with the marketing employed to introduce this new gadget and ensuing phenomenon to John Q Public.

IBM had the Little Tramp character complete with cane pitching the IBM Personal Computer. A young Bill Cosby was the spokesman for Texas Instruments. The Commodore computer was just coming on the scene. Two guys named Wozniak and Jobs were working in a California garage on some electronic gadget called Apple and nobody knew much about Microsoft yet, let alone websites or web design.

The Personal Computer industry was definitely a product without a market when it was first introduced. You can balance your checkbook with it or You can put your recipes on it were common reasons to own one. Why surely every household would own one of these contraptions. How prophetic those early promoters were!

But remember, in the early PC marketing schemes nobody knew they needed a PC. Not only that, they didn’t know what a PC WAS! The marketers scrambled to create a need for these new technological wonders. I can recall buying a Commodore 64 and used it mainly for playing games.