Wednesday, November 17, 2004
How To Be A Wanker 101
Ok, so if anyone out there is an aspiring wanker and needs some good old fashioned mentorship to get you going, we've found your man. (that's him holding the sound card)
Who? Hoo? Who? That's what I said.
According to this article Spanky McDude up there actually believes he can overtake the iPod: he plans to (and I quote) "out market everyone" by spending $100M, he has "delared war". He says he has approx 600 engineers working on research and development of these things right now, and he plans to add 300 more.
So Hoo's sake I'm going to give a little lesson in North American marketting.
Ok, so first of all, dufus, (and Apple is the prime example of this) money spent does not automatically a good marketting campaign make. Similarly, many engineers do not automatically a good product make.
As exhibit 1 why Hoo-boy will undoubtedly be pounded into the south seas basalt he belongs in is that Apple doesn't spend nearly that much money on marketting the iPod now and they have won the whole frickin' market. Not only that, but Pepsi spent $100M on their first promotion with Apple giving iTMS songs away. Hear that Hoo: PEPSI spent. Another company spent $100M promoting someone else's product. I can see all the Fortune 500 companies lining up to dump $100M bones on the friggin' Muvo. (By the way, Pepsi has since put out about $1M for the iPod give away here in Canada too - Pepsi clearly likes the iPod as a marketing tool)
What's the major point from our first lesson class? I'll spell it out:
Take a minute to just breathe that one in. I know it's hard to take.
Add in some good alluring, hip leadership, a heaping dose of really good taste (courtesy of Mr. Steven P. Jobs), and quality materials and craftsmanship, and you've got yourself a winner buck-o.
And the lesson:
So thanks for following along folks. I hope that helps. Geez I gotta get back to work.
Who? Hoo? Who? That's what I said.
According to this article Spanky McDude up there actually believes he can overtake the iPod: he plans to (and I quote) "out market everyone" by spending $100M, he has "delared war". He says he has approx 600 engineers working on research and development of these things right now, and he plans to add 300 more.
So Hoo's sake I'm going to give a little lesson in North American marketting.
Ok, so first of all, dufus, (and Apple is the prime example of this) money spent does not automatically a good marketting campaign make. Similarly, many engineers do not automatically a good product make.
As exhibit 1 why Hoo-boy will undoubtedly be pounded into the south seas basalt he belongs in is that Apple doesn't spend nearly that much money on marketting the iPod now and they have won the whole frickin' market. Not only that, but Pepsi spent $100M on their first promotion with Apple giving iTMS songs away. Hear that Hoo: PEPSI spent. Another company spent $100M promoting someone else's product. I can see all the Fortune 500 companies lining up to dump $100M bones on the friggin' Muvo. (By the way, Pepsi has since put out about $1M for the iPod give away here in Canada too - Pepsi clearly likes the iPod as a marketing tool)
What's the major point from our first lesson class? I'll spell it out:
With the iPod, the product IS the marketing! They don't need to advertise it they way you do a regular product. Traditionally, you make a product and then convince the world that they can use it, and/or that they like it. Everyone already likes the iPod. That's a major difference.Alright, moving on to exhibit 2, (this one's a little more shaky). There's no way Apple has 900 engineers working on the iPod. Actually they bought most of the "iPod" platform from another company, which was pretty small. Turns out that you don't need a LOT of engineers to do a good job, what you need is GOOD engineers.
Take a minute to just breathe that one in. I know it's hard to take.
Add in some good alluring, hip leadership, a heaping dose of really good taste (courtesy of Mr. Steven P. Jobs), and quality materials and craftsmanship, and you've got yourself a winner buck-o.
And the lesson:
The things that make the iPod interesting have much less to do with price and marketing than they do with quality, allure and taste. Hoo has not the taste or the allure, and the Zen lacks the, well, zen, to even come close to comparing to my lovely polished stainless steel and storm-trooper plastics of my 40GB 4G.
So thanks for following along folks. I hope that helps. Geez I gotta get back to work.
