“In their non-music products, Apple, more than just about any other company, has exemplified what I call ‘The Harry Potter Theory of Marketing,'” George Howard writes for Forbes. “That is, just as The Mirror of Erised, that Harry Potter stumbles upon in the attic of Hogwarts reflects back at him what he desires (‘Erised’ is ‘Desire’ in reverse) most, Apple’s products tend to reflect back at those who use them a more-idealized version of themselves.”
“In short, Apple isn’t really selling a computer, they’re selling the possibility of creativity. This is a powerful aspirational tug that Apple holds over customers, and because of it, Apple commands higher profit margins than their competitors who are attempting to attract customers with features… This feature parity, of course, leads to commoditization, and – ultimately – to a price war/race to the bottom,” Howard writes. “Apple in their non-music offerings avoids the perils of commoditization by not focusing on features, but rather by creating products that reflect a more-idealized version of the customer back at them.”
“Yesterday’s announcement of Apple Music really was about features,” Howard writes. “It’s too bad for Apple, for music, and for musicians that they don’t appear to be applying the same ingenuity to music as they do for their other products; I’d love to see what they would come up with if they did.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nice little theory, however it utterly fails to jibe with reality.
Yes, portions of the WWDC keynote presentation blew; some of the Apple Music bits, in particular. Before Apple’s next keynote, Tim Cook needs to a) get a competent keynote producer and b) if he already has one, listen to his competent keynote producer next time. The whole Iovine/Drake portion should never have gone public. Don’t mistake a spotty keynote presentation for a marketing campaign. Let’s move past the WWDC keynote now, shall we?
Below is how the real world, the 99.6% who do not watch Apple Worldwide Developer Conference keynotes, will be introduced to Apple Music.
Behold, “The Harry Potter Theory of Marketing” in action:
