Mike Harris's Blog

I attended the Apple launch last week "it's only Rock and Roll but we like it". More accurately I attended the European version of that. About 1000 Apple distributors, development partners, big customers and friends packed into the Brewery Conference centre near the Barbican to hear Apple Europe's boss Pascal Cagni tell the story of how European revenues had grown from around a billion dollars a year in 2001 to over 10 billion dollars now , quite a story. And well done Pascal for a strategy brilliantly executed.

He put it down to a wonderfully differentiated product range and a distribution and customer support strategy that was a perfect reflection of the Apple magic : making advanced technology cool (the italics are my words not his).

Then by live satellite link from California on strode a gaunt but defiant Steve Jobs. Nobody expected him to be there. His presence had everybody on the their feet applauding. And off he went demonstrating the new software and the new iPods ; nothing revolutionary but a bunch of stuff that keeps them moving ahead of competitors. Jobs apparent catchphrase of "How cool is that?" was totally infectious and the audience loved it.

There was a little surprise that the much awaited video camera came with the nano not the touch/iphone but they have 100 m nanos out there (vs 50m touch/iphones) and the nano is the product used by the 18-24 year olds who post all the videos on Youtube so it made sense to me.

There were a number of fascinations for me in the whole event which go some way to explaining Apple's success and are good general principles anyway:

1. Everybody who works for Apple is totally enthusiastic about the company and its products (more so than ever!) and that enthusiasm is infectious for customers and partners alike.
   


2. Apple is rigorous about delivering its brand promise (the Apple magic) across all elements of the customer experience not just the product itself
   


3. Apple is very focused on customer segmentation – they are very clear on the different customer needs/segments served by the iphone, the touch , the classic, the shuttle and the nano
   


4. There was something for every customer segment in the announcements ; every product got better, stretched to meet new unmet needs, moved further away from the competition
   

Finally I laughed out loud when Jobs when announcing one feature (I can't remember which) said "customers have been asking us for this for ages". So much for the oft repeated Jobs line "we never talk to customers" . They do, but they do it intelligently , not through mindless focus groups.