Apple Marketing Lesson 2: People don't want great products, they want sexy bad ones.

Not too long ago a wrote a post about the genius of Apple and the management of the product life cycle for the iPhone. This evening as I was skimming through my Google Reader, three of the best (in my opinion) gadget blogs, CrunchGear, Engadget and Gizmodo were running posts about the next generation iPhone having video editing capabilities.

Granted that this just is a rumour, but if this turns out to be true then I question whether Apple is actually that brilliant in their product management or are we, and the marketing departments every the other mobile phone company, completely retarded.

Video capabilities on the iPhone is only blogworthy because of it's absence in the current two iPhone models on the market. Both Sony Ericsson and Nokia's N-Series phones have had excellent photographic and video capabilities for years. Not that I see anyone carrying it around anymore but the Nokia N92 and N93i even looks like a camcorder.

As an amateur marketing critic, I can only conclude that if I wanted to develop and sell a product that will become the stuff of legends, the objective is not to design the best product that ever existed but instead to design something that falls just short of expectation, and then meet those expectations over an extended period.

Ive also realised that for Apple this is not a new strategy. Just think about other products they've launched in the past. Why didn't the old white MacBook have a full featured multi-touch touch pad like the MacBook Pro even though it could easily have been fixed with a software update? How many years did it take for the Mighty Mouse to come out and provide 2 button functionality? (even though loyal Mac users still continue to argue they don't need contextual menus)

Company's like Nokia or even Microsoft could learn from this valuable lesson.

Don't launch products that can do more. Design something that SHOULD be able to do more but don't and let the consumers pine for it.

Like I said before! Genius!

My Thoughts on Creativity

Marketing has always been my passion which is why after a decade in the conference industry I decided to embark on providing a service that can really help brands and business connect with the people they need to in a better and more effective way, beyond what I was providing to sponsors and delegates attending my events.

Too many books and articles that I have read have told me that marketing is an increasingly difficult business. Too many media channels, too much clutter and consumers who are becoming wise to the BS that is out there. Many of the friends that I have spoken to have even told me that I was nuts to try to build an agency. I was told horror stories of long work hours and crazy deadlines. So why am I still obsessed with R3TRO?

Well the answer is simple. Every successful campaign that I have seen, read about, been involved in has been ridiculously simple. The most successful ones are for brands that have one single message that is communicated in a manner that exploits what people already believe. I also believe that whether you are young, old, black, white, yellow, male, female or a mixture of all these features, people are fundamentally the same. Marketing then becomes art imitating life rather than life imitating art.

The rest of it is process. Thomas Edison once said "Genuis is 1% Inspiration and 99% Perspiration." To be inspired is to be emotionally affected by external forces. To be creative the ability to create something from nothing. Creativity as such has no place in marketing. You cannot develop a successful marketing campaign by pondering clever ideas in isolation.

And then in a moment of clarity it came to me. How can I offer a down-to-earth crap-free marketing methodology to my clients? It was simple. By simply removing creativity from the equation and replacing it with inspiration. R3TRO is about looking back for the idea that already exists to inspire your next campaign.

Of course this is no revelation to people in the Advertising industry. Advertising is not about creativity at all. Creativity is simply a mask that is worn to disguise the reuse of old ideas that people have generally forgotten about. But business is not stupid and even if they do not see the situation as I see it, when was the last time you were pitched an original idea?

Forget the "original idea" as the core to your campaign because people just can't relate to it unless your business has the kind of marketing budget to brainwash your target audience. Rely on what they know and can relate to and develop something that inspires your customers and facilitates that emotional connection to your product.

At the risk of preaching, if you are responsible for a brand, or a product, to really communicate your message affectively, be inspired by your customers because only then will you be able to inspire new customers.