Meet Apple's marketing genius: Joe

So this software developer asks me: "and what do you do for a living?" I could tell him that I'm a tattoo artist with a strange affection for HIV infected needles, but that is lying and my mother told me not to do. "Marketing". 'Boom', the word drops between us on the floor and I see myself filled in the other person's mental cabinet, somewhere between "Dogpoo collectors" and "Blind trapeze artists". If you're into marketing you know his answer: "Oh, marketing!" with an emphasis on the "Oh" as in "Oh, you're an Al Queda member. Sorry, but I have to leave now, I got to ... uh ... pick up my old granny, she's a former blind trapeze artist who needs assistance."

What have we done to deserve this? We were once the kings of the world, we drove in Porches with stunning Italian models on our side. OK, it was a Ford and I divorced the wife sitting next to me, but at least we all knew that we were part of the most sexy floor of any company. You could work for an Albanian ball bearings manufacturer, the fact that you worked on marketing made women flock around you, whispering things in your ears of which you didn't even knew that is was physically possible between two adults. Our first loss was the millennium bug. Oh dear, did we scare the hell out of everyone until January 1, 00:00 hour. Not only your computer would go berserk, also the earth was going to stop spinning, catapulting us in an orbit of the planet Barzwurpia 7, know for its hostile environment. In fact, every IT person told me that it wouldn't be so dramatic, but somewhere between IT and marketing the message got lost and suddenly all of us were taking Barzwurpian language courses.

But what about marketing in 2007? Boy, does it go fast outside our office doors. It seems that you have to scan the internet constantly or you miss the latest hype. "Oh, Dan, you shouldn't have sneezed, WEB 2.0 was born during that time." It's a trend to be on top of the latest trend, so we're all clothed by blogs, news feeds, communities and email alerts "Little Benny has finished his toilet visit and he needs paper, NOW! - this message was brought to you live by T-Mobile, your partner in home communication". So marketers have 2 options which I call the Sony way or the Apple way. Take first Sony: one day they decided to make a commercial and all of a sudden we were youtube-wise staring at jumping ping pong balls and we sighted: "I want a new television". So we come home after work, kiss our wife, kids and Brutus the dog (in no particular order) and say: "we need a new Sony Bravia set". Your wife, who is the Alan Greenspan of da house answers: "ours is only 2 years old, why should we have a new one?" And the only reasonable reply you can think of is "...uh... Ping pong balls?" Anyway, great marketing from our Japanese friends but let me reveal you one of the greatest marketing secrets in the history of the world: "how does Apple makes such a success without the use of Web 2.0?" You don't see funny movies of Steve Jobs on youtube, even worse, the last time Steve Jobs was funny is somewhere in 1974 when he told that joke about a nun, a hot dog and a skydiver. In fact it seams that Apple doesn't even like the Web 2.0: remember that neat replica of Apple's Fifth Avenue shop in Second Life? It was not the work of Steve Jobs, Inc but made by apple enthusiastic from a company called AxisVR. Two milliseconds after they released their concept, the SAF (Special Apple Force) bombed their office with two nuclear warheads (the second one was just to be sure). The message was clear: you simple humans don't mess with Apple's marketing.

So how does Apple marketing works in this Web 2.0 world? I know the secret, even more, I know the head of Apple's marketing department personally... - drum roll -... I can reveal that the whole marketing department of Apple IS this one person. Yup, forget all those fancy diagrams on Apple's website: it got only names of dead people on it, I'm telling you: the whole department is one guy and his name is Joe. I've met Joe during a boat trip in South Africa and since I was the only person who laughed with his joke about a nun, a hot dog and a skydiver we became buddies. So he explained me the whole marketing concept of Apple. Joe enters his office at Infinite Loop 1 on Monday morning at 09:00h sharp. At 09:01 he picks up his phone and calls Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal: "Yo, Walter, we got ourselves a shiny new product over here at Apple." Thousands of miles and a couple of timezones further Walter sits straight in his bed and yells: "tell me, oh please tell me what it is!" Joe answers: "It's a phone Walty, you can use it to call someone." At 09:02h Joe hangs up, Walter Mossberg yells through the Wall Street Journal pneumatic tube system "STOP THE PRESS!" while typing a twelve page article praising this new Apple device. At 09:05h Joe starts his lawnmower and keeps himself busy at the Apple premises for the rest of the week.

I do envy Joe. He makes marketing look as something that can be done on a Monday morning between 09:00h and 09:02h. But I'm not Joe, and the fact that you are reading this instead of sitting on a lawnmower in Cupertino tells me that you're not Joe either. So we carry on, we plunge in the whole Web 2.0, subscribe to blogs, enter communities, hook up virtually with men and women, even women with moustaches, but I don't care, because once I will discover that Walter Mossberg is only 3 zillion links away from me and boy, will he be in a surprise when I get my hands on his phone number. And if I call before 09:00h I beat Joe and Apple and ...

BOOM!

This blog was interrupted by an action of the SAF, please come back later or in the meanwhile you can leave your salary at www.apple.com/store

Tom Peters told me not to come

Business guru Tom Peters is in town and boy, I knew it. The flood of mails and invitations on my desk grew day by day, each last one with even more exclamation points than the one before. So what started with "we kindly invite you to pay a quadzillion euros to attend Tom Peters" ended with "Sign in NOW or we let a wild herd of gnus stampede through your garden". Considering the fact that my broccoli's and carrots are at they finest I even thought about attending this event. After all, Mister Peters' visit was the number one topic at cocktail-parties and business chit chat: "What? You're not going to see Tom Peters? Oh boy, I feel pity for your broccoli's".

The problem with these events is not the lack of sympathy or admiration for business gurus like Tom Peters, Jim Collins, Steven D. Levitt or Christiane Northrup. OK, not exactly Christiane Northrup, since she's the author of "The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing During the Change, 2nd Edition", but hey, what an intriguing title: we can only guess what was wrong with the 1st Edition. The reason that you won't see me at these kind of symposia is that the scenario is always the same. You start in a traffic jam from hell because urbanists have decided that convention centers in my country are located at the less accessible part of town and you always end up in a fight till death for the last free parking spot. After you step over your defeated opponent you're in for something that looks like tasteless brown water but the girl at the counter ensures me that it was once coffee. No time to waste, into the auditorium where a never-ending horror starts: the local speakers. Last year I went to see Mister Gates, little did I knew that almost everyone of the local Microsoft management felt the urge to take the stage. First we saw movie-clips with a lot of people who definitely were on drugs considering the way they gazed at their computer-screens with a stupid grin on their face. Then a local Pointy-Haired Boss started to speak some kind of English but don't ask me the subject since I was solving world problems like how to keep herds of gnus out of my garden. The state secretary for economic affairs, who happened to sit on my row, felt asleep, which was good for us because his snoring kept us all awake. So after we had seen even more movie-clips of people on drugs, pointing at excel sheets with the winning lotto-numbers of next Saturday, Mister Gates took the stage and I left. Really, I left. Trust me, listening to Bill Gates after that your brains have evacuated your body was one step to far. And it gave me the change to wake up the state secretary so that he didn't missed Bill's speech.

But how about Mister Tom Peters? At least he didn't gave me an operation system which forces me to click on start to stop something. And who can resist a quote like: "Wouldn't you like to think that a quiet leader will lead you to the promised land? I think it's total utter bull, because I consider this to be a time of chaos." The Peters Principles have great value and I'm glad to see that at least the "Women roar" manifesto is taken by heart by my company, but no, I'm not going to see the man himself. I'm excused, really, by Mister Peters himself since he talked to me and said: "my best part is my enthusiasm, all my theories have a restricted value." OK, he didn't talked to me directly, I read his words in a newspaper interview but it sounded as he assured me:"your broccoli's are safe with me."

This week I received a final mail: "Dear Mister Bogaert, the Tom Peters event is sold out, but you can still order his book HERE". I would have clicked on the link but unfortunately I was not in the office, I was sitting in front of a police officer who looked at me with a puzzled face: "...what stampeded through your garden?". Damn Tom Peters, never trust an angry old man.