Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

After making the previous post on the launch of the IPhone this coming month, I just came across the following observation from columnist John Dvorak, who's been writing about technology since the early eighties... "During this phase of a market, margins are incredibly thin so that the small fry cannot compete without losing a lot of money. As for advertising and expensive marketing this is nothing like Apple has ever stepped into. It's a buzz saw waiting to chop up newbies. The problem here is that while Apple can play the fashion game as well as any company, there is no evidence that it can play it fast enough. These phones go in and out of style so fast that unless Apple has half a dozen variants in the pipeline, its phone, even if immediately successful, will be passé within 3 months. There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive. ... What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it's smart it will call the iPhone a 'reference design' and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures." Funnily enough he gives exactly the same time scale (three months) that I did below, before the "coolness" factor wears off. Obviously, great minds think alike!

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