The iPhone is the most anticipated new product launch in recent years, and the most important for Apple since the original Macintosh.
Even before consumers have started camping out in front of Apple stores, branding experts--both the self-anointed and the publicly acclaimed--have trumpeted it as the dawn of a new golden era of branding.
Except research indicates the opposite. A recent study by Compete Inc. asked 680 potential iPhone shoppers this question: "How important would each of the following be on your decision to purchase an iPhone?" The results were revealing:
- Price of the device: 81%
- Performance of the phone: 77 %
- Battery life: 76%
- Overall ease of use: 75%
- Design/look of device: 46%
- Ease of using touch screen: 45%
- Ability to synch device with music collection: 44%
- Wi-fi: 37%
- Ease of accessing e-mail: 37%
And, in last place: The fact that Apple makes the device: 32%
You mean, all the anticipation is about the actual, physical product and its features--and the Apple brand is at the bottom of the list, less than half as important as something as banal as "battery life"? After all, conventional marketing wisdom says that some time around 1980, consumers stopped buying products and started buying brands instead. And no brand has been more vaunted than Apple.
Could it be that great brands are the product (no pun intended) of something other than branding? In fact, they are! What's more, branding and great brands are made of altogether different stuff. Branding seeks to transcend tangible benefits, or even compensate for their absence. But great brands are built from the inside out, on tangible benefits. Branding seeks to create reality through perceptions, engendered by compelling communications.
Great brands, meanwhile, are the result of compelling products and services. The exception--a few image-driven categories such as beer, liquor or fashion--only proves the rule.
For those with a stake in selling marketing communications, branding is a convenient confusion of cause and effect. But brands such as Apple didn't become great because of good ads. Rather, the unique and differentiated propositions of the products made for good ads. Macintosh computers really are more beautiful inside and out: easier to use, and better to look at.
A brand is neither a goal nor a means, but a result of consistent delivery against a differentiating, relevant benefit. A brand is not an end in itself, and it doesn't even provide a hedge against future bets.
Case in point: Apple's flops, such as its early 1980s Lisa computer, its highly-hyped Newton PDA and the Motorola/Apple RokR iTunes phone. The Lisa was done in by a high price, the Newton by weak handwriting technology. Most recently, and most to the point, the RokR flopped because of mediocre software and hardware design. In each instance, the Apple brand was only as good as the product.
Great products speak for themselves. Not by coincidence, the iPhone ads are as straightforward as a product demo can be: a hand in front of a black background operating the device. Could Motorola or Nokia get away with this? Hardly. What sets the iPhone apart is its unique design and the promise of new features and a new standard in usability.
Those features better work--and wow--because a brand, even one with Apple's vaunted reputation, won't carry the day by itself.
Marc E. Babej and Tim Pollak are partners at Reason Inc., a marketing-strategy consulting firm that works with clients in a range of categories, including media and entertainment, financial and professional services, packaged goods and the public sector.
