The Tanning of America (29 page)

Unfortunately, they were caught in the haywire of future shock remix and had a fluency breakdown. First of all, because of compartmentalization, executives in different divisions didn't talk to one another about integration of all these assets. Second, when they did research and development, they forgot about delivering to consumer needs—listening to younger-generation consumers before deciding what to build. Instead, they went forward and designed technology that was developed without regard for what the consumer wanted. Right here at the paradigm shift when marketing needed to depart from the approach of shoving products in front of consumers' faces, Sony missed the step.

The technology for Sony's Walkman MP3 player was actually excellent, even though the branding was confusing and emotionless—using model numbers, for example, instead of names to build on their former successes. Over at Apple, in contrast, when Macs were first vying for attention and being made in bright colors, the brand referred to the red computer by its color, “Ruby.” What was more inviting—a Mac that went by the appealing name of a color like Ruby or Sage or Snow or a computer by whatever brand made it with a model number of X1256 that you had to remember, as a consumer, in order to get the one that was right for you? The disconnect that many technology brands had from the marketing aspects of delivering consumer needs was flagrant.

Reading some of these signs—around the same time that Apple was tinkering with its portable audio device and the online music delivery system it would develop, as Napster and its ilk ran roughshod—Sony developed a concept that would be an online platform for selling music called Sony Connect. I envisioned this would be the ultimate digital store as Sony already owned all the content—music/film/gaming/technology—and I had lined up a dream-come-true partner: McDonald's. Despite the initial enthusiasm from pretty much all the top Sony executives, at the last minute the divisions couldn't come together to embrace a new paradigm and take advantage of their own resources. This was terrain that Sony ought to have conquered that was rightfully theirs, but they were not even on the field. It dawned on me then that the main reason many larger corporations miss the boat when it's time to innovate is that executives are too busy protecting their jobs and not listening to the consumer. At that point, I understood the rule that says you can get anything done in most organizations as long as you're willing not to take credit for it.

I was disappointed that the company couldn't get their older, more vertical ways of doing business to be in sync with the new mode of horizontal alignment. Besides fear of taking a risk, executives who had been doing just fine up until that time were complacent. And complacency, time and again, is what ultimately leaves the consumer out of the conversation.

This was a cautionary tale that was being witnessed at a lot of companies in the '00s. Another portable audio device, the Dell DJ, the brand's cool-as-hell MP3 player, suffered from complacency when the company decided it would provide only a minimal budget for its launch. Their thinking was that if they put most of those resources into initiating a viral strategy to generate “cool” word of mouth, consumers would know a great thing when they learned of it. That was the problem. The whole power of viral is that it is spontaneous, authentic, and consumer driven. Dell's intended contact with the target consumer didn't happen. Then, after four weeks, all marketing support (traditional and online) for the Dell DJ stopped. Within days, blogs and community sites were up in arms over the contrived viral effort. Sales never took off and eventually the Dell DJ was discontinued, furthering overall negative brand repercussions. It was and remains a classic example of how cool cannot be concocted without dialogue that becomes megalogue, nor achieved by using strategies that don't involve a deep understanding of target consumers. The episode was also a reminder that without the ongoing consistent support of the brand at large, a new offering can't live long on a wing and a prayer.

Of course, Dell wasn't alone in being caught in the tangled web of future shock remix—in which reading trends without the correct cipher could sometimes be fatal. And they weren't the first or last brand to nail the technology but blow the marketing.

So who got it right? Who really understood where the music business was headed and what the delivery system of the near future turning rapidly into the now was going to look like? Well, it wasn't a brand with any experience, per se, in music. Why then did it turn out to be Apple, of all brands, that came seemingly out of nowhere and gave birth to a personal portable audio device that could well be declared the eighth wonder of the world? Unlikely though it appeared at the time, Apple was just doing what it always had done—finding a way to change the conversation.

The first tech company that had ever ventured into the realm of culture, the Apple team had long been paying attention to consumer cues. When they launched colored iMac desktops and named them with rich-sounding colors, they also showed the understanding that a home computer was décor—as much as they later understood that a laptop's color and design were aspects of personal fashion. Instead of talking about technology, Apple learned early in its history to shift the conversation and have it be about lifestyle, fun, individual expression, and ease of use. Those seductive elements that were woven into every aspect of design and marketing made for a very intimate relationship between consumers and the brand's products. To outsiders, loyal Apple customers appeared to border on being religious fanatics.

While this is what we know today, there is another story many have forgotten, about the October 2001 iPod launch that was, as they say, more fizzle than sizzle. No, the mixed reactions had nothing to do with the product. God no. Weighing in at a featherlight 6.5 ounces, the size of a deck of cards, its smooth eggshell
-
white plastic exterior looked futuristic. Besides the fact that it could store a thousand songs and fit in your pocket, plain and simple, it was sexy. The iPod responded to the touch—even the most subtle or suggestive. Seriously, the geeks in tech and design were hitting the bull's-eye of cool so far. And the other genius piece of the puzzle was that in a mere ten seconds, the contents of an entire CD could be downloaded. Paying attention to culture, the conversation wasn't about the mechanics of doing this but about how personal music collections could be portable, malleable, and preserved. Steve Jobs declared with certainty, “With the iPod, listening to music will never be the same again.”

Glorious though it was, after nine months, Apple had sold only 150,000 iPods. How could that be? Though it's debatable, I don't think the issue holding the iPod back from its grand destiny was really its higher price. Asking $399 for a superior product was smart—even if other brands were selling for less. There were two stumbling blocks that prevented the launch from making history. First, there were compatibility concerns—or, at least, there was the perception by consumers who were PC-born-and-bred that they would have to convert to another operating system. Almost like changing their religion. As the visionary that he is, Steve Jobs took a peek into the future and came up with a way to solve the problem with the announcement that “hell froze over.” By that he was referring to a former statement that not unless hell froze over would Apple's software be compatible with that of Microsoft's. So now that they had already released the iPod and were about to change their creed, the only way they could credibly assure the market that it could work on PCs was to blur the line in the sand and tell the public that hell freezing over wasn't going to be the end of the world. The message just took time to get out there.

The second, bigger problem was that there was no music industry infrastructure to market and promote the devices. That's why market analysts were so sure that Sony, with its music division, would eventually win this contest.

But as Alvin Toffler had warned in
Future Shock
about the lack of fluidity that would impair larger organizations, the rigidity of the corporate compartments at Sony got in the way. Aside from not maximizing the possibilities of Sony Connect, the marketing people never saw a way to take advantage of the richness of their music library or their stable of recording and movie superstars or their vast network of retail partners selling all their other world-class electronic products. The marketing divisions were not culturally attuned enough to see the big picture. Apple, meanwhile, was culturally attuned enough to realize that though they didn't have any of those assets, they had something in the shop that nobody else had.

It was called iTunes, an online music store with the potential to ultimately compete not only with Napster and the other music-downloading sites but also with actual music retail stores. In 1999, when it was in development, Steve Jobs had contacted Jimmy Iovine at Interscope/Geffen/A&M to tell him where they were with it and to get input, possibly to talk about collaboration. In those days—as we covered earlier—album sales, thanks to hip-hop and country music, were at their high-water mark. So the idea that there would come a time when record stores would be close to obsolete wasn't so pressing. The concept of iTunes as a way to charge for downloaded content and be able to pay record companies and artists was also a promising way to combat the scourge of illegal downloading. Still, for a record company to collaborate on such an endeavor—at that time—would have been a slippery slope.

But in 2003 that slope was starting to look a lot more appealing. The record business was in a dire slump, with one of the main culprits being the proliferation of Napster-type sites that allowed users to illegally share digital copies of recorded music. On top of that, those in-control, discerning, highly mobile urban youth consumers were buying fewer CDs in general—with popular trends rising and falling too fast for purchase consideration to get them into record stores. As we would point out at Translation, the influence of the savvy consumer was ratcheting up, not down, with increased exposure to media, brands, and diverse consumption choices—creating new, sophisticated sensitivities for timeliness and relevance.

Future shock remix had altered the shelf life of cultural viability. As fast as a trendy phenomenon or a new artist, for example, could heat up, they could be gone. And what used to be durable was fleeting. Previously, it was known in the music business that if an artist was waning in popularity in the United States, he or she could still tour and sell CDs like hotcakes in Europe, the Far East, South America, you name it—because information about the artist's supposed lack of coolness hadn't hit yet and there was no way to fact-check the situation. Not anymore. The new consumers have so much connectivity that there was suddenly no delay in the export of culture. Same thing with consumers buying products. The new savvy consumer knew when a brand wasn't working or wasn't cool anymore because of instant access to cultural barometers from multiple media streams. Everything was becoming instantaneous—for better and for worse.

Leading up to this point, Jimmy Iovine had been looking to find a technology company to help stop the scourge of illegal music downloading that was killing the business. When he was explaining the dire straits to the chairman of Intel and underscoring what a spiritual wasteland the world would be without music and art, Jimmy was told, in essence, well, not all industries are meant to be forever. It was then that he began to discuss with Steve Jobs what a partnership between Interscope and Apple's iTunes would look like.

Even as the iPod was getting a slow start, Apple had adapted and had found a way—with this online music store—to change the conversation, again, away from technology toward a welcoming shopping experience. It was accessible even for consumers formerly intimidated or alienated by the impersonal aspects of making purchases without another human being there. The hardware and the software, or in this case the iPod and the iTunes content supply, were interconnected, each enhancing the other. The thrust had originally been that if consumers loved the iPod, since iTunes was designed to speak the same language and made downloading so easy, the online music store would be a hit too. Now the possibility existed that if consumers loved iTunes, they would naturally want to play their music on an iPod. Two paths to glory!

The partnership with Interscope supplied the marketing piece of the puzzle. In return for Apple underwriting video production for new releases, Interscope would provide product placement for Apple—boosting the business of both brands and eliminating costs to both corporations. A win-win. Plus, at that moment when the music industry was clinging to a cliff, Apple was offering everyone the means to fight digital piracy without spending resources on endless lawsuits.

In a variation on the wise practice of knowing what you don't know, Apple welcomed Jimmy Iovine's insight when he told them that the brand image they were using for iTunes, a picture of a guitar on a whiteboard, was wrong. He explained that the cultural drivers, the current generation, barely knew how iconic that guitar was. They had no connection to a guitar the way kids who grew up on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones did. The consumers who were going to connect to iTunes were all about the sound and the beats and the feeling of the music itself. From then on, the marketing for the iPod was developed to include the iconic silhouettes of individuals in cool active postures while listening to music on their iPods, with distinguishable earbud headphones connecting them to their devices. While there was no self-conscious effort to make the silhouettes appear to be specifically black, white, Hispanic, Asian, or any distinct ethnicity, the use of an understanding of tanning was striking—with silhouettes, male and female, sporting an assortment of hairstyles and urban, cool attire.

That was no accident. Using a diverse group of real people in silhouette was matched by using real music from a diverse group of artists—U2, Black Eyed Peas, Eminem, Mary J. Blige (all not coincidentally Jimmy Iovine's artists), all with different audiences yet each authentic and iconic. Artists' personal playlists were a very important part of the marketing plan, a very measured tactic to let consumers know what their favorite artist happened to have on his or her iPod. The universal connection to different kinds of music that wouldn't necessarily be predicted reconfirmed all the crossover that had happened as the result of tanning. I remember seeing Eminem's personal playlist the first time and being shocked that he had Jodeci on there. R&B and soul? Why not? Providing a sneak peek into what artists were downloading was yet another brilliant way that Steve Jobs saw fit to make the consumption at an online music store contagious.