Dave McNally Photography

By David McNally, Mar­ket­ing Man­age­ment (MKM-560)

An Amer­i­can com­pany is lead­ing con­sumers to a new fron­tier. Hype over the Apple iPad com­bines rave reviews, in-depth arti­cles and a pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing cam­paign with early adopter enthu­si­asm result­ing in strong sales and an opti­mistic future.

A tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing plan may have over­looked some of the ingre­di­ents of this suc­cess­ful prod­uct launch. Apple, how­ever, is not a tra­di­tional company.

With a pen­chant for cor­po­rate secrets, the com­pany fos­ters a strong sense of curios­ity among con­sumers. Never show­ing its hand, the com­pany found a tech­nol­ogy that had the poten­tial to change the world. They let peo­ple think about it, dream about it and mature their desires all while never say­ing a thing in the press. Many peo­ple would have dropped $1,000 two years ago for a new toy. But, Apple wasn’t going after that crowd. The tar­get is not tech­nol­o­gists. The tar­get is everybody.

Apple dropped the cur­tain on its new prod­uct at the time of its choos­ing to max­i­mize mar­ket­ing con­di­tions. The com­pany defines con­di­tions that are ripe for its mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion strate­gies. An attrac­tive price point of $500 for the entry level removes bar­ri­ers and changes the mar­ket­ing land­scape. If con­sumers assume they are get­ting a good deal, the meme is self-fulfilling.

The tech­nol­ogy press has dis­cussed the prospects of a new tablet device for many years. Other com­pa­nies have attempted sim­i­lar prod­ucts, but met with lim­ited suc­cess. This is an area where Apple has seen fer­tile ground before. Ten years ago, many tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies were mak­ing MP3 play­ers. Mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion was lim­ited to a sliver of poten­tial con­sumers. Enter Apple.

In the Beginning…

The iPod launch in Octo­ber 2001 left many won­der­ing in what direct­ing this com­puter com­pany was head­ing, but soon the world was see­ing a unique and inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non. Each cus­tomer lis­ten­ing out there in the “wild” was being closely observed by other poten­tial con­sumers. The early adopters had become an army of prod­uct evan­ge­lists. Once other con­sumers saw the “cool­ness” of the device, they wanted one. The prover­bial snow­ball cre­ated an avalanche.

In essence, this is the Apple mar­ket­ing plan. The com­pany finds a tech­nol­ogy where oth­ers have tried but not suc­ceeded. They come up with a bet­ter solu­tion. They wait until the mar­ket is ripe. They cul­ti­vate key prod­uct review­ers. They let the media be an echo cham­ber of buzz about their prod­uct. They let early adopters be an enthu­si­ast unpaid sales force. They succeed.

Can every com­pany be as suc­cess­ful with this plan? Many have tried to copy Apple prod­ucts and mar­ket­ing tech­niques. But, the com­pany has unique brand­ing and fol­low­ers. If a new com­pany were to try the same for­mula, the results would per­haps not be the same. Brand loy­alty may have some­thing to do with it.

Dis­as­ter lurks for some com­pa­nies who attempt to copy, but then fail to meet con­sumer expec­ta­tions. For exam­ple, Palm, Inc. met with early suc­cess in the hand­held mobile mar­ket in the 1990s. Today’s mar­ket, how­ever, is not impressed with Palm prod­ucts as the com­pany is near­ing bankruptcy.

This Sec­tor

What is this sec­tor? The obit­u­ary for the print indus­try has been writ­ten and pub­lished for years. But, print is not going away any­time soon. “It’s not news that time and tech­nol­ogy are alter­ing print as we knew it, con­tribut­ing to down­ward slides in both press run sizes and fre­quen­cies,[1]” writes Mark Vruno, a busi­ness writer who has reported on the com­mer­cial print indus­try for more than 20 years.

Iron­i­cally, rather than killing print, the intro­duc­tion of a new elec­tronic device is capa­ble of breath­ing life into old media while break­ing ground on new horizons.

The future of print is quite lit­er­ally in the hands of con­sumers. By walk­ing around with an iPad-like device, books, mag­a­zines, the Inter­net, audio, video, games, e-mail are only a touch away.

Devel­op­ing prod­uct strate­gies in this new envi­ron­ment will be key to the future of the print­ing indus­try. Being there is half the game. Devel­op­ing mag­i­cal appli­ca­tions that inspire con­sumers and meet expec­ta­tions is the inter­sec­tion of prof­itabil­ity and innovation.

One addi­tional con­sid­er­a­tion is the busi­ness model Apple has devel­oped. As third-party devel­op­ers sell their wares to iPad con­sumers through the in-house Apple Store, Apple takes a 30-percent bite out of each sale. Devel­op­ers get rich, as well as Apple. The model has not worked yet for other com­pa­nies. By becom­ing an appli­ca­tion pub­lisher, Apple not other deliv­ers the hard­ware and soft­ware, they deliver a total experience.

To suc­ceed in tomorrow’s print indus­try, com­pa­nies need such diver­si­fi­ca­tion strategies.

Mar­ket­ing Opportunities

“Mar­ket­ing is cre­at­ing a demand for some­thing,[2]” writes Lissa Wyman a car­pet indus­try mar­keter jeal­ous of the iPad’s mar­ket­ing. “News and com­men­tary about the iPad in the media and on the Inter­net started build­ing at the begin­ning of the year and is reach­ing such a frenzy that I am hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing as I write this. I. MUST. HAVE. ONE. NO. TWO.”

Apple iPad now approaches the prod­uct pen­e­tra­tion of Android and Black­berry. This news comes less than a month from prod­uct launch. Mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion is one thing. Sheer dom­i­nance is another. The other show will drop with the 3G iPad ships later this month. With a $30 a month fee to AT&T, iPad users will be on the Inter­net wher­ever such ser­vice exists (appar­ently with the excep­tion of Israel[3]).

The beauty of the new device plat­form is that the car­pet indus­try could now be an equal player in this realm. Con­sider an iPad appli­ca­tion, which would insert dif­fer­ent car­pets onto a photo of your very own floor. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less for instant visual sam­pling of a vendor’s inven­tory. Cre­ative mar­keters will undoubt­edly develop such an app.

Wyman said, “Very few rug com­pa­nies know how to dif­fer­en­ti­ate their prod­uct from the rest of the pack.” This con­clu­sion is apt to other indus­tries as well.

Specif­i­cally, the birth of a new con­sumer plat­form presents the print indus­try with busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Using tem­plates, a cre­ative print­ing com­pany can pro­vide cus­tomers with an onscreen model of what an ordered prod­uct may look like. With pur­chase options built into the appli­ca­tion, sales could be brisk.

Com­pa­nies like Blurb, Lulu and oth­ers allow con­sumers to cre­ate con­tent for deliv­ery in the phys­i­cal world. For exam­ple, the Blurb model con­nects with online pho­to­graphic ser­vices, such as Flickr, to auto­mate the process of self-publishing. Gifts may be cre­ated for fam­ily mem­bers and friends online and mailed to their phys­i­cal addresses.

Being there is one thing; deliv­er­ing high-quality prod­ucts results, return cus­tomers and buzz is another. The mar­ket is global because the platform’s reach is world­wide. The poten­tial there­fore, is unlim­ited. New fron­tiers in the print indus­try are only a touch away.

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[1] Vruno, M.. (2010, Feb­ru­ary). Why Print’s Not Going Away Any­time Soon. Print­ing News, 164(5), 8–9. Retrieved April 18, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Trade & Indus­try. (Doc­u­ment ID: 1972400391).

[2] Lissa Wyman. (2010, April). How do we cre­ate iPad-like fer­vor in our indus­try? Fur­ni­ture Today, 34(31), 45. Retrieved April 18, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Trade & Indus­try. (Doc­u­ment ID: 2009970931).

[3] Levin­son, C. (2010). Israel IPad Ban Puz­zles Many. Retrieved Apr. 18, 2010, from The Wall Street Jour­nal, New York, NY. Web site: http://bit.ly/b16kRt.