4 Xerox: the research brand
In branding, there are no pure success stories and there are no pure failure stories. Usually, successes and failures coexist within the same brand, and Xerox is no exception.
When Xerox – a name associated with paper copiers – decided to launch IBM- style office data systems it ended up with one of the largest brand failures of all times, at least in financial terms. Another disaster was the Telecopier, the company’s early version of a fax machine. However, the reason these ventures failed is exactly the same reason why Xerox is a success. Xerox is associated with one category, the category it invented – paper copiers.
The Xerox brand first became massive in 1959 with the launch of the Xerox 914, the world’s first automatic plain-paper copier. Fortune magazine two years later called this machine ‘the most successful product ever marketed in America’. From the 914 onwards, Xerox has been inextricably associated with copiers, and has led the field with advanced and innovative products. In fact, innovation is key to the company’s success and is exemplified by its emphasis on technological research. For instance, in 1970 it set up the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox PARC as it has become known.
However, in terms of the Xerox brand, the research centre has been a rather mixed blessing. As well as producing undeniable advancements in copier technology, it was also behind Xerox data systems and the Telecopier. Xerox also has its own university – the Xerox Document University in Virginia.
Of course, research is important to just about all technology brands, and nobody can accuse Xerox of falling short on these grounds. What people have accused Xerox of is the wrong focus. ‘Xerox. . . lost focus on their base business,’ writes Jack Trout, in his book Big Brands, Big Trouble (2001), ‘thus allowing competition to take away their most important customers.’ ‘When Xerox tried to put its powerful copier name on computers, the result was billions of dollars in losses,’ write Al and Laura Ries, in The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding (1998).
Xerox is singled out by such leading advocates of branding, because it spent a long length of its history trying to change its identity in people’s minds. This ambition and its futility were evident in an advert for Xerox computer services, which said: ‘This is not about copiers.’ The fact that the word ‘copiers’ was included shows that Xerox acknowledged the problem it faced. Xerox was about one type of product, copiers. It was not, like IBM, about a broader concept such as computer technology.
As inventors of the copier category, it has been stuck with that single association. Xerox has been able to use that association and build a $20 billion empire on the back of it. And it is the Xerox name itself, rather than the research and new products, that is the most powerful part of the brand. Now that it has decided to focus on what it does best rather than finance ambitious new directions, the brand will grow even more powerful.
It is remarkable to think that the name could be even bigger if its ambition had been a little bit smaller.
Secrets of success
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First mover. Xerox was the first in a new category when it launched its Xerox 914 copier.
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PR. As the first in a new category, it was able to generate valuable PR as the US media sought to document the technological breakthrough Xerox had made.
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Research. Through its research centre and university, Xerox remains at the cutting edge of technological research.
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Name. Xerox is a short, distinctive name that has become synonymous with the copiers it manufactures. As such, it is hard for competitors to eat into the company’s market share, even when it makes a few wrong turns.
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