A little while ago I told you about Apple’s carefully crafted Archetype Branding of Steve Jobs as a "Wizard of Oz"-like character, the magician who disappears behind the curtains and reappears with new, ever-more-amazing wonders of technology.
Since then, there have been a number of developments that both prove the power of this form of marketing, as well as its potential pitfalls.
Good news first: Apple’s iPhone has been flying off the shelves at a rate of 3 Million in the first month. And the new iPhone App Store has had very healthy downloads of both free and for-pay applications during that same time frame, to the tune of 60 Million downloads and $30 Million in sales (and all despite the launch weekend hiccups that "melted" Apple’s servers).
Apple is proving that there is real money to be made in an add-on app market, something that has eluded most other players so far, be they Google, Facebook, or MySpace.
So the mix of secrecy ("The Enigma" archetype) and The Magician (sometimes also called "The Change Master" archetype), that equals "The Wizard of Oz", clearly has been working for Apple.
A few weeks ago we were predictably fed more grist for the mill, when Apple made several more secretive yet enticing statements during its Q2/2008 financial reporting re: Q3/Q4 earnings projections, specifically the financial dent that an as of yet unnamed new product or product redesign or possibly significant price drop might make in the results for the second half of the year.
Cue the rumor mongering…
But maybe it has been working too well: Besides the launch hiccups already mentioned, there have been issues reported with the iPhone 3G’s battery life in 3G mode, as well as with Apple’s only tangentially related MobileMe storage/synching service that was supposed to replace Apple’s previous .Mac service.
A Bridge Too Far?
This latter change on top of and simultaneous to the 3G launch and the firmware update for the 1st generation iPhones may have proved the proverbial "bridge too far". The new service has been resoundingly panned, including by people that easily qualify as Mac/Apple enthusiasts (such as Walt Mossberg of the WSJ Tech Department).
And while hardware and other issues with the iPhone and other Mac products have been mostly annecdotal (read Michael Arrington of TechCrunch on his experiences here), the MobileMe issues are so universally acknowledged that Apple has been voluntarily adding several months of free service (usually priced at about $100/year) for users, along with strong mea culpa statements.
And therein lies the pitfall of successful Archetype Branding: Once you have "imprinted" your archetype or mix of archetypes upon the mind of John Q Public, you have to deliver on the promise or the associations that where developed at this point. Otherwise, you run the risk of offending more resoundingly, precisely because you bonded with your customers and prospects at a deeper, more meaningful level.
People’s Unconscious Minds (their "Inner Child") may respond with outright indignation or anger when the cherished association is broken up. "You really aren’t a Magician after all… ".
If your success outpaces your ability to deliver (in Apple’s case delivering working marvels of technology to a rapidly growing user base), you have a real problem. One would hope that Apple understands this and avoids too many repeats of this dilemma in the future. Else its stellar brand could be in serious jeopardy.
