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

Will Apple Buy Facebook?

Right now, Apple can purchase Facebook twice over and still have money in the bank.  But why would they do so?

Ping is a failure.  Apple doesn't have a social network.  Right now every startup has to come to market on the back of Facebook's social graph.  Instagram, Zynga, Buddy Media have all seen near billion dollar valuations simply by coupling to Facebook's social graph.

It is remarkable that many large brands no longer run marketing campaigns to drive traffic to their own websites.  Instead they drive them (lazily, if you ask me) to facebook.com/companyname and leverage the social tools (like, share, post, etc.) that exist there.  All this does is drive more traffic to Facebook which creates a virtuous circle - benefitting Mr. Zuckerberg.

Apple gets this (so does Google, btw).  It is the same way the iPod begat iTunes which made the iPhone and iPad the dominate players in their market.  It is about critical mass - getting people to spend more time, money, and effort in your own walled garden than anywhere else. Will Apple make iTV (or Apple Television) a social experience - sharing with others what you are watching, on what device, and what people think, chatting live together - if so, they will need a (BIG) social network.

Today's launch of Airtime.com is just another example of a well-funded company without even a website - all the heavy lifting is done at facebook.  And Apple, uncharacteristically, is left out of the equation. How long until Apple marketing fixes that omission?

Apple iPad Marketing Innovation meets...clothing?

So I've been looking for a good way to carry my new iPad (once it arrives on March 16th that is) without wearing a backpack or carrying a bag.  I want to be able to ride a bike, walk to a park, hop on a bus, or even see a movie without the extra burden of being tied down to a bag...or worse yet advertising to everyone that I'm carrying an expensive toy.

So I Googled "iPad clothing" - and I discovered the Scottevest Transformer jacket.  While I haven't yet pulled the trigger on my Blaze Red XL purchase, it seems to me that this product is in need of some Kickstarter-type marketing love.  They are clearly Apple, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs fans (and even have a tongue-in-cheek "Keynote" presentation where their CEO tries his best to channel some Jobsian love) and it seems they are really trying to bring innovation to clothing.

I doubt the words innovation and clothing have rarely been used in the same sentence - but when was the last time you saw jacket sleeves attached by magnets? I know some people like Mark Cuban think Scottevest's patent for TEC or "Technology Enabled Clothing" is a joke - but it got me thinking that while more than 300 million iOS devices have been sold I doubt that the attach rate of devices to clothing is very high. But it seems to me inevitable that clothing and technology will one day fuse. 

I realize their CEO, Scott Jordan was recently on Shark Tank in an effort to get funding and/or free marketing (and some folks were really put off by his performance) but I think he's on to something. Pockets on our pants somehow predated the car keys, phones and wallets we have today and I'm pretty sure we're now all out of places to hold our tech comfortably. Perhaps some day we'll see a line of official Apple iClothing on sale in an Apple store.

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Inspired by Steve: My New Book on Apple Marketing

After spending the last few weeks thinking about Steve and the impact he had on the world, I've decided to write a more detailed book about my life and Apple.  This book will reveal what it was like to work at Apple during the dark days before Steve returned as well as how Apple changed the world under Steve's leadership.  You'll learn some secrets about Apple that I've shared in some of my keynote speeches including how I almost died the same year that Apple almost died, why the original iMac was translucent, and how iTunes was an accident.

As an experiment, I will begin by releasing some of chapters on these pages under new posts.  My hope is that you will enjoy my writing and give me some feedback and in return I may release some chapters for free as I've done with my short ebook.

Stay tuned, and thanks for your help on this labor of love.

Tribute to Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs' death hit me in a way I wasn't expecting, even though I was expecting Steve Jobs' death. 

I'll write much more on these pages soon, but I was inspired to quickly create this tribute video to him: Here is Steve Jobs narrating and starring in his own Think Different commercial.  I couldn't wait for Apple to do this so I had to - of course using all Apple tools.

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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