If your product sounds better than it actually is then you have got a nice ad. If your product is better than it sounds then you will get some word of mouth.
When you have got a product that sounds nice and is nice, then you will ship.
Marketing wont sell something that people don’t want. When was the last time you picked something because it had a great tag line but didn’t have the utility?
So if your product sounds better than it is, use the marketing dollars to make it better. Better than what it is. Better than what competitors can come up with tomorrow.
The Newton would not have cut it even with a billion dollar ad blitz. The iPhone did it without a TV spot. Its just took ten more years of research and product innovation.
Curiously it also made up for the “loss” of the Newton…by a few billion dollars.
