Don't drown the lede.

We told you a couple of days ago about how sometimes products don’t succeed in the marketplace because of the addition of an unusual feature. Today we have a case of the original marketers not understanding which features made the product good.

This Boombotix Boombot speaker is a splash-resistant mobile Bluetooth speaker by itself - and it can also join up with a subwoofer-equipped charging base for more booming sound.

We’re interested! Pretty cool! A nice little shower speaker that can double as a louder, fuller bookshelf or kitchen speaker when you put it on its charging base. It’s got a few other features, but there’s your story right there. Everything else is minor details.

So naturally, those minor details are exactly what the marketing copy on the Boombot’s Amazon page leads with. The first bullet point? “2 Gigabyte Flash Drive”. This refers to the Boombot’s built-in storage that you can load songs onto and play. We’re sure the interface to do that is terrible, and it’s way clunkier than streaming Bluetooth from your phone, but hey, it’s there if you want it. It just has no business being the first bullet point on the Amazon page.

The second bullet point: “Siri / Google Voice Control + Speakerphone”. Again, fine for people who want that, but my phone is already a speakerphone. You should be telling me what this can do that my phone can’t do.

Finally, at the third bullet point, we get to “Waterproof up to 3 feet”. We tested this out ourselves, dunking it into some water, and it seemed to come out OK. But to be on the safe side, we’re going with “splashproof”. Anyway, at least they’re finally getting to what makes this unusual.

The last two of the five bullets also tout utterly unremarkable features. Nowhere in any of this does it say anything like “Carry it around as a portable speaker, or return it to its subwoofer base for booming sound.”

The “Product Description” copy further down on the page is no better. It starts with fluff about being “designed for those that demand the highest level of audio performance” - the kind of marketing blare that actively fights your attempt to keep reading. Then it’s right into a non-formatted mess of features that literally no human being has ever or will ever read.

Finally, finally, the last sentence starts to address this product’s Unique Selling Proposition. We quote it here in full:

On its own, the Boombot PRO is a wireless speaker that gives you premium audio anytime, anywhere. When it is seamlessly docked on the BASS Station, the combination of the two units form a pow

That’s right. It cuts off mid-sentence. The single most important thing about this product, and it’s tucked away at the very bottom of the product information, and the sentence is cut off mid-word. Granted, the manufacturer doesn’t necessarily control what happens when somebody at Amazon copy-pastes some text - but that’s all the more reason to put the important stuff at the very top.

Never mind the other missed opportunities we see - why isn’t the subwoofer/charging station called the “Home Bass”? what about a name that reflects the product’s two uses and big bass response, like “Double Booty”? - those are judgment calls. All Boombotix really had to say was:

The Boombotix Boombot is both a splashproof Bluetooth speaker in the shower or backyard - and a louder, deeper speaker when combined with its subwoofer base on your bookshelf, desktop, or counter.

See how easy that was? Crappy marketing like this drives us crazy. But it does make us thankful for two things: one, that it lets us get our hands on products like this at prices like this; and two, that whoever was in charge of marketing the Boombotix Boombot speaker doesn’t work for us.