The evangelists will be more than willing to put up with any kind of marginal performance form its navigation, with the early adopters often finding the navigation of initial screens like a game to be solved and won. For the mainstream user however, these screens can be exceptionally challenging and difficult to overcome. And the mainstream customer is where TiVo could have taken off. For the couch potato, time is not that much of an issue as they are on the couch all day long watching TV. The time continuum means nothing to them, while the experience is very important. The marketing in its present form however is very utilitarian-based and does not appeal to this group fo customers whatsoever. For the NBC executive the ability to monitor logs to see which commercials are seen or not, and to see which programs are most and least watched are a goldmine of data that can be used to better plan schedules in addition to defining advertising rates. The founder of TiVo would love to hear that the real problem is that no one really understands just how amazing this system is. Unfortunately the marketing is so utilitarian based and yet there is so much potential to align it with the emotions of being connected with family and time savings, compressing time in effect, that the overall sales of the product never reach their optimal levels. it's because the marketing has not touched on the most relevant emotions to communicate clearly and passionately what the real value of TiVo is. For TiVo to turn this situation around they will need to find the dominant emotion that resonate with each customer base and redefine their marketing accordingly.

2. Based on what you know now (ten years after the case), how has TiVo...

TiVo lost the opportunity to be the long-term generic verb for capturing digital content by not aligning their marketing and messaging to the emotions in each customer segment that could have made them great. Instead "DVR it" is now the verb of choice, while "TiVo it" had a short run of popularity. TiVo still faces the challenge of making its marketing resonate with its more critical audiences and markets. In addition the role of social media and the enhanced functionality available on the Web including HTML5-based interfaces on Android tablets and phones and Apple iPad tablet PCs, TiVo could have created an entirely different tier of service and support. It lost out by staying too focused just on the home entertainment event as a driving factors in its market growth.
Recommendations for TiVo include being more audience- and market-driven and aligning messaging to key emotions first. They need to make an emotional connection with the customer. Today much of the advertising is still sterile and driven by features and price, which completely takes emption out of the decision of customers. Basically they are turning some of their customers into a Spock-like, totally rational buyer. This is exactly why TiVo will continue to face a commoditization challenge against DVR boxes and services, as they are not breaking out on their own and creating a unique identity via better branding. Making customers the stars instead of the product will also help.