The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

Tribute to Steve Jobs

Marketers who have to create and harness new markets by introducing radically new products or services face an extra challenge: market ‘education’. How do you explain something that never existed before? This happens quite often in the high-tech domain where we talk about disruptive technologies that revolutionise ways things are done and, of course, engender new paradigms.

And, as technologies become increasingly sophisticated, the ‘education’ requirements become more complex. In the late 1800s, the automobile was introduced as a ‘horseless carriage’ and it had less than ten ‘commands’ - on/off, accelerate, brake, clutch, change gear, petrol/air mix (automatic and computerised nowadays). Today, many hi-tech products are fairly complex and rather hard to use. And marketers struggle to describe the benefits of a growing number of new ’things’ such as broadband Internet, WiFi, 3G, MMS, video streaming, digital TV, satellite radio and so on. Are analogies adequate to explain basic principles?

As part of the team that created Apple Computer Europe in the early 1980s, I had the privilege to witness the results of an ad campaign we ran in Europe’s main business newspapers. The ad featured a picture of a bicycle illustrating the concept of “wheels for the mind” Apple was using in 1981 to explain the benefits of a personal computer (the Apple II). The analogy was quite powerful … and successful.

If you live in the middle of nowhere, in a house providing shelter and food, and if you have a bicycle, you can, in one day, explore more territory around the house than if you do it on foot. With a computer, by analogy, you can analyse much more data within a given time, or handle a fixed amount of data much faster. So, the personal computer gives you ‘wheels for the mind’.

In the present context, this PC-bicycle analogy suggests several remarks and, maybe, new analogies:

- The price of power
In comparison with the early 1980s, personal computers have become as fast and as versatile as airplanes - wings for the mind - but they are more difficult to use and, especially, to manage and maintain, like airplanes.

- The world at your fingertips
Connected to the Internet, they are also ‘wheels for the legs’ - you can shop around the world without having to get out of your house.

- Your ‘world’ at your fingertips
With a program like iTunes, you can store all your CDs on a PC’s hard disk and have your favourite music at your fingertip - ’wheels for the arm’!

- Computers are becoming truly personal
Finally, pocket/palm-sized devices that you can ‘wear’ all the time - high-end cellphones, PDAs, iPods - are the first breeds of truly personal IT systems, albeit not yet convenient enough (do you enjoy typing an SMS with a numeric keyboard?). But with software like Migo you can now carry your desktop (files, settings, email, etc.) in your pocket - ’wheels for the wheels’?

Hi-tech keeps evolving. Market education needs never disappear. Isn’t IT still fun?

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