Motorola : Bringing back the past

Old news reports resonate best in a heritage setting.

The Site

Motorola, a US-based communications technology and services group, presents an unusual slant on its landmark innovations.

Motorola has a five-part History sub-section within the about section of its dot com site. This includes Historic news releases, a small collection of “classic press releases” linked to notable moments in the company’s 81-year history. The six releases are listed in a simple index showing dates and captions; for example, 3 April 1973: Motorola Demonstrates Portable Telephone to be Available for Public Use by 1976.

The releases are PDF files, which is clearly indicated by a familiar graphic, and the file size and number of pages are also given. Files open in a new secondary window. The index is replicated on the History landing page, though all listings link to the index in Historical news releases.

The Takeaway

Motorola makes much of its technological achievements and inventiveness, illustrating its “proud… company heritage” in areas such as careers as well as the multi-faceted History sub-section in About Motorola. It has its interactive timeline, as many big well-established companies do, but its Historic news releases are an altogether rarer example of how to inject interest into this aspect of a corporate site. Who could not be fascinated, for example, by the vision in the 1973 release of a future in which “it will be possible to make telephone calls while riding in a taxi, walking down the city’s streets, sitting in a restaurant or anywhere else a radio signal can reach…”. The contemporary tone retained by reproducing the release adds a freshness and preserves something of the then sense of wonder that would be lost in reducing it to a caption in a timeline.

The unintentional irony for Motorola – and a reminder for everyone else – is that, appropriate as the feature is for a heritage-proud company, what makes it so engaging is not technology but content.

First published on 16 February, 2010