Scarcity
July 15th, 2008
Seth Godin is a marketeer who blogs about marketing. Normally, I like his posts and think they are insightful.
But in his last post on the iPhone, he misses the ball completely. He says Apple should use the internet to form queues, thus saving valuable time from the early adopters. But he misses an important thing: queues on the internet aren’t visible. If 500 people line up before an Apple store at midnight, a TV crew can go out and film them. A million people ‘lining up’ on the internet doesn’t count for one TV-worthy shot.
He also states that the ‘first iPhones should be orange’. I disagree. The same people that are now claiming ‘I have the first iPhone’ want to claim the same in 5 months, about the first iRack. If they get an orange iPhone, their fame is carved in stone. With a black (or even a white) one, their fame will evaporate, and they will need to prove themselves again in 5 months.
All the principles he states, can be valid when you’re establishing a business. However, if you want to live on hype, violate them.
2 Responses to “Scarcity”
Sorry, comments are closed for this article.
July 15th, 2008 at 09:19 AM Maybe TV is a medium of the past, it certainly isn't the medium of peeps who shell out money to cool ICT gadgets. What use of getting your shiny new product airplay ... when only viewed on 'de rode loper' which only caters 3th & 4th age non-buyers?
July 15th, 2008 at 02:34 PM Maybe there is a way to display queues on a web page, but I certainly agree with your point on the early adopters.