The Jerk’s iPology Heard Round the Apple

With a simple "iPology" and a “magnanimous” rebate offer, chairman Steve Jobs turned a crisis across the entire Apple tribe into a Silver Anvil award (PR’s highest award) candidate and created a classic direct marketing case study. PT Barnum must be rolling over with envy.

From Tom Bemis’ coining MarketWatch column, “Apple introduces the iPology, Innovative marketing scheme turns complaints into publicity,“ to John Paczkowski’s “Digital Daily” vcast rant “Insincere iPology,” the tsunami of buzz circled the global Apple community (178,000 English pages: Google) faster than the sound wave from the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, generating in excess of $10 million in free publicity for Jobs’ latest innovation.

Yes folks, “Apple Computer has developed and introduced an entirely new marketing innovation called the iPology that turns customer complaints into free publicity.” (MarketWatch). And, yes again folks, myself a double 8 gig early iPhone adopter (plus one for my son, Alex), felt the double sting of the surprise $200 price reduction, Jobs’ initial explanatory letter to the tribe did little to mollify.

"There is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever," Jobs wrote. "This is life in the technology lane."

After only eight weeks? Please!

But bowing to intense pressure from Apple loyalists (or was it after a discussion with his PR cadre, or was it all planned well in advance?), Jobs granted a $100 reprieve to the smarting techno-horde of 750,000 iPhone owners. Sort of…since the $100 is in the form of a rebate to be spent freely only at Apple stores, which makes it one of the most ingenious traffic building techniques of recent years, and doubtless a profit center as the holiday season approaches. Indeed, I completed the online “paperwork” in but a minute or two and received my rebate e-coupon just this morning. So am I happy now?

Jobs said that while he believes Apple made the right move in lowering the price of its 8-gigabyte iPhone to $399 from $599, he acknowledged that "we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust. And we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these."

After all, who runs the store these days –the customers not the inmates– and in this case we see Apple using up its’ “Fool Me Once” card to cleverly build market dominance (iPhone sales shot passed 1 million in a week) worth billions. But still many Apple loyalists are left with a bitter taste by the experience, many even ranting the iPhone will be their last Apple purchase.

http://chiefmarketer.com/ipology_09182007/?cid=popular