Selling
Sinclair:
The Creation of "Uncle Clive"
Sinclair faced a difficult
marketing challenge in the 1980s, when the company developed
its range of home computers. Until the ZX80 came along, Sinclair's
range had a fairly straightforward division between pre-assembled
consumer products (such as most of the calculator range) and
hobbyist kits (such as most of the audio devices). Marketing
to hobbyists required a significantly different pitch from
marketing to technologically illiterate consumers. With the
ZX range of computers, Sinclair faced the difficult task of
marketing the range to both groups at once. The machines would
have to gain the support of hobbyists - hence the kit versions
of the ZX80 and ZX81 and the do-it-yourself Spectrum upgrade
kit - while at the same time not frightening off computer
novices.
Primary Contact, Sinclair's marketing agency, concentrated
on marketing to the novices while still providing enough technical
detail to get the hobbyists hooked. Sinclair's adverts moved
into full colour, sometimes spread over as many as eight pages
in glossy mainstream publications like Personal Computer
World. Big glossy photographs of the products were in.
Technical data was out, or at least much reduced compared
to the hobbyist-only days. Ease and simplicity were constantly
stressed. The idiosyncratic keyword entry system of the ZX
computers was marketed as "eliminating a great deal of
tiresome typing". The educational value of the computers
was played up - one of the ZX80 adverts shows a father instructing
his son in the art of ZX80 programming, illustrating the use
of the machine "as a family learning aid." (Looking
back at the adverts, the total lack of any female involvement
is striking - they all show men happily enjoying Sinclair
products while the women look on admiringly. It has to be
said that this probably wasn't too far off the mark at the
time; the hobbyist world was indeed very much male-dominated.)
It was at around this time that the legend of "Uncle
Clive" Sinclair came into being. Nobody seems to know
exactly who originated it. Guy Kewney, a gossip columnist
at Personal Computer World, has claimed credit for
the invention of the "Uncle Clive" persona but the
ultimate credit seems to have lain with Primary Contact. The
agency recognised at the start of the 1980s that Sinclair's
new mainstream customers needed some way of identifying more
personally with the company. They hit on the idea of using
Clive Sinclair himself as the figurehead, a move that succeeded
brilliantly. He had not exactly been an obscure figure before,
but now he moved into the spotlight in a way that none of
his rivals were able to emulate. Few people would have recognised
Amstrad's Alan Sugar on the street, unless they lived in Tottenham,
but "Uncle Clive" became a household name with an
instantly recognisable face, much loved by cartoonists. Andy
Knott of Kinnear, the PR agency which handled the Sinclair
advertising contract briefly in 1985-86, explained:
[Clive] also contributes the personality
that is viewed from the outside, and actually that is very
valuable. When people go in to buy a Sinclair product it's
almost as if they're buying it from a friend - you know,
my uncle made this ...
(Interview, 22 October 1985, in Adamson and Kennedy, Sinclair
& the Sunrise Technology)
The way Sinclair's image was used seems, in retrospect, to
have had much to do with the mood of national defiance (or
perhaps hubris) stoked by Margaret Thatcher's Tory government
at the start of the 1980s. Britain had been in poor economic
shape throughout the 1970s. Thatcher's monetarist "shock
therapy" caused economic upheavals on a scale not experienced
since the Great Depression fifty years earlier, with three
million unemployed and great swathes of industrialised Britain
becoming poverty blackspots as unprofitable shipyards, steel
mills and coal mines were systematically closed down. It was
against this background that Sinclair was marketed as the
flagbearer of a new high-tech Britain, the underdog taking
the fight to the Americans and Japanese. It was a very successful
strategy; as journalist David O'Reilly noted,
By astute use of public relations, particularly
playing up his image of a Briton taking on the world, Sinclair
has become the best-known name in micros.
(Microscope, October 1982)
One of the most striking images from this campaign came in
1984, when the Sinclair QL was launched - the advertising
campaign included a TV spot showing Sinclair himself literally
leaping over a row of the competitors' computers, literally
a "Quantum Leap".
It's not surprising that the Thatcher government - which
was highly unpopular until the Falklands War and the Labour
opposition's collective suicide made the 1983 election a walkover
- latched onto Sinclair's success. Margaret Thatcher herself
was a great fan of Sinclair, even going so far as to present
the visiting Japanese prime minister with a ZX Spectrum. It
probably came as a surprise only to Sinclair himself when
he was awarded a knighthood in 1983, setting the seal on his
fame. But his appeal as a business icon was not confined to
Right-wing politicians. That same year, the far from Thatcherite
Guardian newspaper awarded Sinclair his Young Businessman
of the Year, despite the fact that (at the age of 43) he was
not exactly young and nor was he a businessman, by his own
lights. Other awards soon came rolling in - a Visiting Fellowship
from Robinson College, Cambridge, Honorary Doctorates of Science
from the Universities of Bath, Warwick and Heriot-Watt as
well as UMIST the following year, a Visiting Professorship
and Honorary Fellowship from Imperial College, London and
a Mullard Medal from the Royal Society, recognising his work
in the field of electronics.
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