What kids want for Christmas

[grizzle]

I think these charts and stats are pretty interesting, but without breaking the numbers down, I don't think these are really comparing apples to apples. For example, Apple has only a couple of products that they actively market, and they essentially have one target group that they market to - kids. Microsoft, on the other hand, has all sorts of hardware, software, services, enterprise solutions, etc., that they are marketing to a much wider range of demographics, and need more marketing (and thus, marketing budget) to cover the wider array of products.

I think if we were to break the numbers down and, say, compare Apple's marketing budget for the iPad versus MS's marketing budget for Surface, they might be more similar. Granted, I would say Apple probably makes much better use of their marketing budget. That said, Apple has more than doubled their marketing spend in the past 3 years, while MS has remained pretty close. Not sure that means anything, really, but just an observation.

Amazon's marketing spend is curious. Back when I worked there, the mantra was to only use word of mouth advertising (except for the Christmas holidays - they always put out decent Xmas commercials) - actual commercials and big marketing were considered no-no's. But, I guess, now that they have moved beyond a website being their main product, and now they sell actual physical products, they have gotten into the marketing game.