Apple hopes to turn iPhone lust into love
Ablang
By Markos Kounalakis - Special To The Bee
Last Updated 10:31 am PDT Sunday, June 24, 2007
Story appeared in FORUM section, Page E1
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/237230.html
Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs has performed the first part of a
technology Kabuki dance by publicly showing just enough of the iPhone
to create consumer lust. Tech-lust is good, but the Holy Grail of
marketing is "love." In the world of consumer goods, marketing
specialists behind one-way mirrors jump up and down and give high-
fives when their observed, focus-grouped tech users say they love
their products.
With the imminent launch of the iPhone into the marketplace, the next
step for Jobs is to turn lust into love -- and this is where
expensive, inanimate, technological consumer goods seem to have an
edge over us free, animate, complex romantic humans. People's emotions
toward others are complex, multilayered and eternally evolving.
Gadgets are not people. Love for them is more easily and safely
expressed.
For product "love" to manifest, a simple promise needs to be
fulfilled. It needs to work predictably -- as advertised or better --
plus feel and look good. It must also be imbued with personality on
the one hand, but, on the other, be thoroughly lacking in any real
human emotional traits. Unlike its human counterpart, a mercurial or
temperamental device is not worthy of love.
Unlike Apple's Newton, which over-promised and under-delivered, the
iPhone seems likely to be able to fill the promise of an electronic
Swiss army knife. Fourteen years ago, I spent more than a year inside
Apple Computer, documenting and writing the history of Newton -- the
first handheld computer and the brainchild of Pepsi's former marketing
maven and then Apple CEO, John Scully.
The most dramatic marketing promise Newton made was handwriting
recognition. Anyone who tried this function immediately realized that
it recognized everything jotted onto its screen in "electronic
ink" ... just rarely accurately. Newton did hundreds of other things
brilliantly, but it failed miserably at the one thing it was expected
to do out of the box.
The iPhone, on the other hand, should have magical iPod abilities and
more. If the iPhone fails to deliver Bono in stereo, or do any of the
other anticipated things that compact consumer technologies already
do, then it will likely be an unlovable product. Maybe not affordable,
but marketing reality thrives in a vacuous parallel world of pleasure
and not pain.
The gadget-marketing world is one where citizens are seen strictly as
consumers. It is not an interdependent planet in which a donated
dollar a day can help a child survive in the developing world or help
put a roof over his head. Consumers are asked to displace those
inconvenient thoughts with deep desire for personal status and
benefit. How can one justify dropping six plus bills on a very cool
looking elective purchase if lingering in his consciousness is the
knowledge that so much cash can just as easily be a micro-loan,
mountains of mosquito netting or cases of vaccines?
How about those who can barely justify the additional debt on their
credit cards? While those on tight budgets might have to ask
themselves how much the iPhone device, calling plans and iTune
downloads cost; in the parallel marketing world, the embarrassing
question salespeople want potential consumers to ask themselves is
"What price affection?"
The marketer's greatest fear for new products is that consumers are
only interested in an unconsummated dalliance. Carefully planned
excitement already surrounds the iPhone's launch. Virtual lines await
the product release, with The Beatles concert reunion tickets
seemingly easier to get hold of than the first iPhones. Lust is in
full bloom. Love is around the corner.
But when it comes to consumer products, love is not eternal. A product
lifecycle is nasty, brutal and short ... and getting shorter. Planned
obsolescence is a key to selling new and improved products in the
marketplace and the next version of iPhone is already planned.
Newton fell flat after its launch, but it did not fail to create a new
job opening for the position of Apple CEO, the inspiration for the
Palm Pilot and other handhelds, and a technology case study still used
in business schools. Less talked about, but equally real, is the
secondary use for failed or obsolete technologies.
For Newton -- as well as Ataris, Osbornes and myriad other computing,
gaming and communications devices -- engineers have a common term for
their eventual secondary use: "door stops." Given the form factor,
lightweight and compact nature of the latest gadgets like the iPhone,
we may be on the verge of a new secondary usage device: the high-tech
"paperweight."
You've got to love that.