Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The Marketing Coach Speaks About the Ipod "The Next Great Invention"

Its been a while since I wrote on my blog as the summer started and well it was hard to sit inside and write about marketing and life. Its quite interesting as this summer brought about a lot of changes in how I view marketing.

For example my wife gave me an an Ipod for my 17th wedding anniversary and I started using "Itunes" for the first time. While doing that I saw two major record store chains in Canada go out of business.

I thought about when I bought Apple stock when it first came out at $18.00 and selling it at $33.00 and laughing when it went down to $12.00. Now its well over $100. I thought about bands that released their CD's to the market and offered customers to decide what they should pay for their CD online averaging around $8.00 a download. I was amazed that customers paid for perceived value on the honour system.

I myself loaded my Ipod and proceeded at 56 years of age to have a blast cutting my grass using my riding lawnmower while listening to Bob Dyland's sons new CD.

I downloaded podcasts on business coaching and while sitting on my dock sipping a cool one and learned about the best way to grow my marketing coaching business. There was peace and harmony in our living room as I listened to electronica and read the newspaper ( as apposed to the web) while my wife sat in the same room and smiled as I listened to my favourite tunes. She was listening to the Three Tenors on hers.

Yes things have changed. The world is a different place and the Ipod and Apple have developed an amazing product. The most important thing is that this product has been promoted by its users. It is so appealing that all you need to do is use it once and you are hooked. If I was a marketeer I would want that with all products. So why is it the record companies,the retail stores, the artists and the recording industry only started to view this product as part of their future.

All the while I was downloading the lastest Coldplay CD at $9.95 Canadian, just $5.00 less than the retail cost, I started looking at the margins being made on the product with little or no overhead. Yes, Apple has developed an amazing product and the Ipod is now part of our culture and part of the future and part of me.

Funny thing is. I had as much fun loading my Ipod as I used to have getting a new record. I got a chance to trial some music and got a chance to have 650 days of music is the palm of my hand. Any product that does that should be a success.

As summer comes to a close I look forward to many a winter night listening to Electronica on my Ipod and reading the newspaper. Now isn't that a culture clash.

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