I sat on a plane next to a guy the other day who had crocs, bad jeans and a scungy t-shirt on, who snorted and occasionally picked his nose. Surprisingly enough I coped with all that.
What I couldn't cope with was when he pulled out his iphone and started listening to his music through his trendy headphones.
I remember when only a few Mac disciples had iphones and they gave you this aura of 'coolness'. It's gone. I used to have people "oohh" and "aaahh" over my various ipod/iphone iterations. Once on an international flight I got more wine, nibbles and attention than anyone else because I had a new ipod. OK that was probably about 8 years ago! I remember being in the States 5 or 6 years ago when the ipod minis had just come out and the cabin crew talking enviously to me about mine. Susi gets now it when she uses her Kindle in public.
I'm hoping it'll happen with the ipad because I'm sorry but my iphone doesn't do it for me anymore.
This nerd actually thought the phone was cool - which it is. But I wouldn't use mine because he was using his and I just didn't want to anymore. Sad, isn't it?
It's also a very pertinent reminder that if your product is adopted too widely and associated with the wrong groups, you can kill your brand. Hush Puppies struggled (and are still struggling) to regain any genuine brand popularity because their shoes became so associated with comfort loving middle-aged middle American boring people that no-one else wanted a bar of them, no matter how good they were.
It's the opposite end of using cool people to create peer pressure for your product in the first place. That's how Apple got the ipod going - by giving it to a select group of hip DJ's to 'trial' for several months before its release - creating incredible demand because everyone wanted what the cool kids had.
But no-one wants the same thing as the people you don't want to be seen with.
Perhaps that's the curse of mass marketing.
Hey, but there's always something new. We'll have ipads long before he gets one.
Comments