This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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Apple’s iPod has taken the world by storm it seems. I first encountered iPod via the hip, happenin, high energy commercial featuring U2. I was immediately hooked on the brand. Apparently so is everyone else. Forget about getting one before Dec 25. Amazon reports they’re currently on back order until . . . ? You may be able to get one before 2005 from Apple’s iPod store.
So what’s all the hubbub with the iPod? Surely a great commercial can’t be the only thing making iPod’s fly off the shelves. Surely, it’s not simply the cool, trendy, hip design that makes an Apple sing. Perhaps it’s the futuristic, 21st century name . . . iPod. iPod. iPod. Just uttering the word makes me feel tech savvy, but not geeky, and far more evolved than the mainstream crowd who still dick around with their pathetic plethora of CDs, CD players, and otherwise non-digital media. (And I don’t even own an iPod).
In branding, everything matters. Everything. Product/service design. Distribution. Delivery. Customer service. Advertising. Graphic design. It all comes together, if done well, to give the prospective customer that feeling in their solar plexus. That deep feeling that says this product, this service, this person resonates with something in me. Something real and something meaningful. It calls to a part of me that yearns to be free. Yearns to be expressed. With iPod, it’s hip. It’s cool. It’s now. It’s tomorrow and beyond.
And oh by the way, I can take my 25,000 favorite songs and my 65,000 favorite photos and carry them around in my pocket.