Marketing Apple: Secrets of the World's Best Marketing Machine

Magical Device, the iPad

I'll have much more to say on this shortly but I need to get two things off my chest first:

1. Apple isn't trying to decide if a niche exists between smartphones and laptops.  They are trying to replace netbooks (and eventually laptops) and get people to carry the cloud with them.  If you think through the logical progression of the Web, all the data we care about will exist online.  The iPad is the device to access it.  Very different mode than a laptop.  This is the device from the future we've seen on Star Trek.  You can buy it today (well in 59 days.)

2. "Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price."  Something about this sentence seemed un-Applelike.  As someone who struggles to come up with the "syrupy goodness" of my value props (spoken about in my free eBook) this phrase seemed too forced and wordy.  It doesn't even say what it does.  "Touch the Web"  or "Your life to go." would have been more Apple-like to me.  I just don't follow this one...

More soon.

P.S. thank you Dane for the correct spelling of niche ;)

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The Magic of Apple Marketing

"Real Artists Ship."

This is a quote attributed to Steve Jobs when the first Macintosh was being developed.  His engineers were struggling with every nuance of the new machine and wanted to slip the launch until they got it just right. Steve compelled them to do better.

Today, Apple has come full circle - they ship a finished product then go back to improve it over and over again.  Look at the iPod - it was great in 1999 and it is even better now.  Other vendors promise something but never seems to ship it, or it comes so much later that the enthusiasm wanes.

But Apple ships.  You'll see it with the Tapplet and I was going to write a similar post, but Joel from Gizmodo says it all:  "Consumer audiences have grown wary of nearly a century of predictable sleight-of-hand. We've seen too many companies promise us the future, then fail to deliver it."

Read the rest of the article.

Meet the real magic of Apple marketing:  Ship delight.  Repeat.

Secrets of the Apple Tablet

Okay, now this is getting way too fun.  Far be it for me to resist from the rampant rumor mongering, but here is what I think is coming later this month:

I think Apple is going to surprise everyone.  While most people think this will be a big iPhone and run apps from the App Store (it will) I think its true intent is to remake the print, tv, and publishing business the same way that iTunes remade the music industry.

• I forsee a beautiful, HD video screen that will let you view all your music, television, movies, magazines, books and DVDs wherever you go. 

• You'll be able to subscribe to beautiful full color magazines via iTunes at 1/4 the price of buying them off the newstands and get exclusive content and video (ads too!) to enhance the reading experience.  (You'll see entire websites rewritten for the device as well.) 

• I think Apple will strike a deal with Amazon to enable digital books to be streamed to the device via a built-in color Kindle app. 

• I think we'll see Apple work with Netflix (or go directly to the studios themselves) to stream movies to the device and of course they already have iTunes to handle your music and television subscriptions. 

Your documents and iPhone/iPod Touch apps will travel with you too - making the device a multipurpose workhorse that will seem to many like something from the future.  And you'll want to own one.  Because it will cost $699.  And you'll subscribe to a lot more stuff every month - buying apps and content wirelessly.  And all of it will be available to view on your AppleTV when you get home since it will now live in Apple's new $1B cloud service.

Finally, the name.

I won't cover the obvious choices spoken elsewhere like iGuide, iScreen, iPad or iSlate (although iSlate would match the iPod branding in that it can be generic).  I think Apple could have cut some deal with the Etch-a-Sketch folks (Ohio Arts) to call it "MagicScreen" (Magic Mouse is already in the house) and they also have the Touch and Air franchises to combine "AirTouch"  Also a possibility relating their own name and their app store to create something like "iTapp"  And let's not forget, Tapplet or Applescreen isn't that far fetched...

Time will tell.  Oh yeah, Time will publish their magazines for it too.