Brands Create Customers

The Apple iPhone brand is on the move, shaking things up. I’ve written about the iPhone’s potential impact on wireless brands and brand strategy here and here. Now iPhones are flying off the shelves in record numbers, mostly to rave reviews. As expected, the iPhone brand is causing havoc in mobile markets. Surprisingly, it may also alter the landscape for brands in all markets, across the board.

The iPhone creates a new customer

After June 29, 2007, customers in mobile markets are a different breed. Apple has upgraded their DNA—irrevocably. The iPhone changes the “phone experience,” the context of the phone, and user expectations to such an extent that it advances the customer to a new level, breaking the traditional mobile phone mold. Because the iPhone is so new, this break currently appears as a fissure, but it has “chasm” written all over it. What the iPod was to music labels, the iPhone may be to established carriers and handset makers.

What “create a customer” means

The phrase “create a customer” means much more than simply making a sale. I define “create a customer” as follows:

To create a customer means to connect a customer to a larger part of himself or herself through the brand. This is a connection to that person’s potential and/or passion, within the context of the customer’s expected brand outcome. Your brand helps customers to discover themselves, unfold themselves, iterate themselves, and prototype new selves that are now latent, awaiting only the wondrous “developer” that flows through your brand platforms and programs.

The initial feelings of delight, amazement and revelation that iPhone users experience are those of a new customer being birthed.

The iPhone changes the game in mobile brands

When great brands change the game they change the customer.

They redefine the customer and the customer’s world, elevating the customer to a completely new context. In this new context the old game suddenly becomes irrelevant, along with all the companies, products and brands wedded to it.

In the iPhone’s case, it changes the game (and the customer) by giving customers more fluid and more fluent access to the world of their culture. The iPhone does this through the power of a highly expressive multi-touch GUI and a version of the sophisticated Mac OS X operating system. The result is a customer liberated from conventional limitations, even in a 1.0 device. Can the carriers match this? No. Can the other handset makers match this? No. Apple has made the “iPhone experience” the new reference context for mobile devices. Everyone else is now playing catch-up, largely on Apple’s terms.

How the iPhone changes brands in general

The impact of the iPhone brand is not limited to mobile wireless markets. It affects all brands because the future of brands lies in personal brand applications that will run on digital devices . . . such as the iPhone. The iPhone is both a reference application and a reference device. It helps usher in the era of the brand as “means.”

As part of “creating a customer” the iPhone enables customers to create and share their own culture–at their fingertips. This culture-creating capacity is what sets brands apart from raw products and services. It is also what differentiates brands as “means” from traditional broadcast brands limited to symbols and signs. With the iPhone itself as an application platform, Apple enables customers to be more, and to do more, in a context they themselves create. Can your brand do that?

Whatever your brand, sooner or later you’ll be asking yourself, “How does our brand play on the iPhone?”

Will AT&T undermine the iPhone brand?

There’s been speculation that Apple’s exclusive deal with AT&T may undermine the iPhone due to the “walled garden” nature of the AT&T brand. There’s some logic to this argument because the AT&T brand is largely predicated on controlling and monetizing customers, not enabling them.

On the other hand, it’s hard to bet against Steve Jobs. He has customers, Moore’s Law, and the Internet on his side. Plus, he’s Steve Jobs. And with the iPhone he has a powerful innovation platform that can move in multiple directions, at a very fast pace. Second and third generation iPhones may make the launch iPhone look elementary and underpowered.

Steve Crandall has some very insightful observations on the marketing dynamics of the Apple/AT&T relationship, and how they may play out.

Photo: Apple, Inc.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Brand Innovation, Brand Leadership, Brand Building, Brand Platforms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.