The marketing machine
I remember when the iPod debuted in 2001: I was a student at the time, so I scrimped and saved for months and months; 400 bucks later I finally had my hands on a 5 gigabyte one. All of my friends thought I was nuts for plunking down so much money for something their $30 CD player could do, but now-a-days you’d be hard-pressed to walk 3 blocks without seeing someone using an iPod. Something happened between 2004 and now to make iPods beyond ubiquitous. Hint: it isn’t a price drop. Everyone knows that Apple creates beautiful (and intuitive) products that have a cultish following. Groundbreaking design isn’t the only thing that has transformed Apple from the darling of the art world into a household name; it’s also their marketing. If you want a first hand look at Apple’s marketing in action, take the iPhone release on Friday – you could scarcely turn on the TV or read a newspaper for a full month before it’s release without hearing something about it. The hype was astounding. The funny thing is, contrary to my assumption and contrary to the image apple projects in their ads, it wasn’t just the cool kids lined-up and counting down until the 6:00pm release. Surrounding me in line was a late 20′s professional, an mid-30′s business man, and a late 40′s corporate lawyer all foaming at the mouth for this $600 phone. After talking with them, it became apparent that each and everyone of them had been gobbling up ever piece of information they could find about it on the internet. This is the real power of Apple’s marketing machine, they created a want need for this device. Apple is slowly but surely becoming the Prada of the computer world. They take a piece of technology (a superiorly designed piece of technology, but a piece of technology none-the-less) slap a high price-tag on it, and make it cool to own. Now this is simplifying the formula quite a bit, but the point is they’ve managed to make their product a status symbol. Not bad for a company that was in the dumps 10 years ago. “Dell people buy computers to get a job done. Apple users buy a computer to make a statement.” – Seth Godin
I can say with absolute certainty that I have been part of the “cult of mac” for twenty years now. Whew!
I love these situation where Jonathan and I come at a topic from totally different generations and end up in exactly the same place.
In 1987 in a tiny apartment in Meadville, Pa ( I was in undergrad at the time studying art history)
my friend introduced me to the MacIntosh SE. (He is now one of the granddaddies of interactive web marketing-hehehehe) It was like we had died and gone to computer heaven. I was so elated to not have to write my papers in DOS – I have never been real good with commands -computer and otherwize. I was overjoyed with the graphical user interface (GUI).
This is one of those words or phrases like hegemony except the opposite. What do I mean? well until today I had only heard people say “gooie” so that how I thought it was spelled whereas with hegemony I had only read it in books and then I heard someone say it outloud and realized I had been mispronouncing it for a long time. BUT I DIGRESS…
ANYWHO.. throughout the entire last twenty years I have always been a “Mac Person” Around ten years ago I was standing in a newly cleaned timesquare ( where did they put all the homeless people ?) and I looked up and there was the beautiful, elegant and timeless face of Marie Callas with “think different” an ad for the new iMacs. I went out and bought a strawberry iMac. People would ask me why a MAC and I would say “it looks great in my apartment.” Obviously the marketing magic worked on me!
No honestly, many of my friends are and were artists and artists almost always chose MACs. And it has come in handy with librar-ness because I have always been a bi-platform gal. PC for work ,Mac for home has always been my moto.
What Jonathan failed to tell you is, after scrimping and saving the $400 for his 5GB IPod purchase (lots of missed food and clothing in the process), he enjoyed it for approximately 3 months. Early one morning, on a D.C. walk back to his apartment, he was acosted by someone who desired his IPod even more than he, the Apple Marketing subliminal message of “you must have an IPod, you must have an IPod, you must have an IPod…..” rang even more true to the assailant’s ear than to Jonathan’s. At knifepoint he abscounded with the prescious cargo, with Jonathan screaming profanities at him as he was enveloped in darkness. Jonathan, alone and musicless, began immediately to scrimp and save for his next IPod purchase. Within just a couple of months Jonathan had acquired another IPod, this time a 20GB for about the same money as the 5GB. Lessons from the past not only resulted in an upgrade on the hardware, but also in a boost in the taxi fare collections for the Metro D.C. area.