On Saturday evening I had gone for my music rehearsals (yes, we’re recording – hopefully I can use the Internet to leverage my music), when a personal experience manifested itself in the form of a beautiful insight.
I own a MacBook and whenever I use it in Public – in India it generates some amount of excitement because of its sleek looks and larger than life presence (ironically pit into a tiny package). I’m sure most of you Macbook users have faced something similar atleast at some point of time.
So to continue my story – my friend looked at my computer and started chiding me for not keeping it clean enough (imagine – this is not really her laptop!). I then made up some silly excuse. After that I showed her a crack on my MacBook, which has come up due to a manufacturing defect (its not really a crack – the glue has come off). Guess what she tells me – she tells me that the Macbook cannot be wrong! – She tells me that I must have dropped it! This is something that most brands aspire to be. They want the consumer to ‘like the brand as a friend’ even though the prospect is not necessarily a user.
Part of why Apple succeeds is because it develops GREAT products. So the product is the marketing. And marketing is built into innovation and the product (which is the most important aspect of Branding/ Marketing in my opinion). As a result of this it has a lot of satisfied customers who TALK – and this talking can cement a message in the listener’s minds. The friend who spoke to me obviously had heard someone (or maybe a lot of people) talk about Apple the way she spoke to me about it. I’m pretty sure that she hasn’t seen an Apple Advertisement so it isn’t like she is being influenced by the ads (which are pretty slick by the way).
So the 2 key things to remember are:
1) The Marketing has to be built into the product.
2) Once that is through viral marketing can have a potent effect.
A Wharton Study highlighted the importance of Consumer Referrals.
Interestingly, Social Media Marketing can also be used to generate a viral effect once the signs of a ‘successful’ product have been felt. Channelling and driving consumer conversations becomes much easier. Social Media can also be used to build the marketing into the product by attaining insights from various potential consumers across platforms.
People often talk about the ‘engagement’ that social media drives. While one needs to appreciate the importance of high engagement levels, one needs to understand that these engagement levels can come about only due to things like a positive use experience, some amount of interesting advertising, a personal connect with the brand (more often than not, it’s a combination of all 3).
Solutions available at WATConsult
hey Harshil,
This is a must read real life incident where a customer was dissatisfied with Apple service as they were reluctant to hear.
What he did, he authentically shared his experience of Apple MacBook and Apple India’s service at:-
- Apple Sucks (MouthShut) – http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Apple_MacBook-137876-1.html
- Apple Sucks (CNet Reviews)
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/apple-macbook-white-core/4864-3121_7-32737065.html?ctype=msgid&messageSiteID=9&messageID=2544985&cval=2544985
As expected, he got a call from Apple. They apologized for the bad experience and offered him a brand new and the next version of the laptop as the compensation.
That’s power of being online!
http://www.venturewoods.org/index.php/2008/02/29/power-of-being-online/
the best way to market a product is to make it kool among the audience……like promoting it as a luxury item even though your target is mass market…learn from nokia every now and then they launch there cell phones at 30000 bucks so to position it as luxurious and good phone and then reduce its prices till it reach 10000 rs…….so in this time people buy with no such feeling of buying cheap item as every1 wants to show off………materialistic world as they say……btw harshil nice way to show that u have macbook ….is it mc air nd whats the price in india cos i want to buy it 2……..
Got a simple Macbook Dude
– yea but Nokia’s strategy is more about putting a product through the different stages of the market. You have to remember that products have a really short lifecycle now. I was looking more at products which really begin and end at the consumer. Some of Nokia’s products do it really well! Others – are off the mark. MacBook air is close to 90k in India – not worth it.
Here is another value add to the post:-
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/05/why-word-of-mou.html