I won't claim that Apple is the ONLY company out there whose marketing is a little on the pretentious side. I also don't really know anything about marketing. But from what I experienced today, I feel like I know a little.
I'm planning on buying an iMac over the weekend of Aug. 1st for my girlfriend. This is when I can take advantage of 3 amazing things: N.C.'s tax free weekend, my girlfriend's education discount (she's a teacher), and the "buy a Mac, get a free iPod" promotion that runs until August 15. I will basically save almost $500 if not more. Oh, and by "for my girlfriend" I mean that I will keep the computer and she will keep the iPod. I am really excited about this and so have been visiting the Apple Store (which is very close to my apartment, luckily) about once a week to play with computers and iPod Touches (or is "iPods Touch?").
Today however, my sacred mission of opening 50 applications at once over and over on every computer in the store was thwarted by something I avoid whenever possible: having to wait in line. I walked up to the Apple store and noticed a bunch of people standing outside. There was no fire, so I asked a normal passerby (who was standing and watching, away from the line, as if there actually was a fire in the store) what was going on. "Oh they're waiting to buy the iPhone." I asked if I could go in just to look around. "I don't know." So I approached the door to store and walked up to one of the Apple Minions. She had a clipboard and possibly even a freaking headset on. All this scene was missing was a red carpet. It was super lame already; I should have known what was coming. "Hi, I don't want to buy an iPhone. Can I just go look around?" Then, she pointed to the line. Yes, that's right. She didn't say anything, just pointed. "So I have to wait in line to look around?" "Yes." "Oh ok, thanks." "You're very welcome." I stood there for a brief moment, mere feet away from the sacred threshold which separated me from the inside of that perverted sanctuary for fanboys across the globe, and had a strange thought....
"There are fewer people inside that store than there are on a normal weekday...much less a weekend." I turned around sullenly and began to shuffle away. I used my better judgment and resisted the urge to vocalize that thought that enters my head multiple times every day of my increasingly cynical life: "What a bunch of douchebags." "No Gary," I thought. I told myself they were really just people who simply wanted to buy a product, like me. So it wasn't the customers I became frustrated with. My frustrations were focused on the unknowns who organized this whole "line" scheme at the Apple Store. The Store was functioning like a giant robot, based on Unix and wearing an imaginary black turtleneck. Let me skip all the wordiness (whatever's left..) and get to the point.
The Apple Store is putting on a front with this line-forming crap. I understand it if it's so crowded nobody can move around and it's opening day for the iThing, but it wasn't crowded. Like I said, it's more crowded (uncomfortably so, usually) on a typical Saturday. Here's why nobody at the Store said "Hey, Joe, let's take down the line thing and let everybody come in." Nobody said it because it's some big stupid marketing trick. 99% of the people who pass the store look at all the a-holes waiting in line for something they could pick up in 5 minutes 2 days later, and they think "wow what's tha -- oh Apple. Wow I wonder what's going on."
So what about the title of this post? The fact that Apple wouldn't shut down the line and let everybody come in as usual when they don't NEED to have lines is evidence that they have what I call a marketing identity crisis. They are trying to put up this face of luxury or something. "Our products are so special you have to wait in line for an hour to buy them before you can go home and jerk off on them." Apple is just selling computers and phones and mp3 players. Oh, and an image too. But the REAL products they are selling don't really warrant having a line outside.
They probably claim to do it in the name of efficiency. But I claim they do it in the name of douchebag-iness. Here's my free advice to Apple for how to sell iPhones the most efficient way: Put a big stack of iPhones behind all the registers. Let everybody go straight in and buy their iPhone. And get them out. And let the people who don't want to wait in an unnecessary line go in and look at their computer.
I guess I'm leaving out another possible reason for the lines. It's called Personal Shopping. You can set up an APPOINTMENT with an Apple Minion so they can help you buy your shit. This is great because I'm sure there are all kinds of stupid comments dropped on unknowing customers during these "Personal Shopping" appointments (see
my post about ridiculous comments made daily at the Apple Store). So that's pretty freaking luxurious. I get to wait in line for an hour and then get a personal shopping appointment so somebody can blab shit to me about the iPhone that I already know because I want to buy it so badly that I'll wait in line for an hour to get it! I don't even think that shit goes down at Tiffany & Co.
When's the last time you saw a line outside of any store at the mall? Do you think people want Apple products more than any other products at the mall? No. It's marketing. It's the same as having oily bare-chested 17 year old hotties of both sexes getting paid to stand around like fools at Abercrombie. (Well maybe not bare-chested for the females....but then again it is Abercrombie.) It's the same thing: something to draw attention. Apple is so pretentious they'd probably have oily-er, skankier, sexier, and more Aryan models standing around like sluts at their store, if it only lined up well with their products. But since it doesn't they came up with this line idea. And the personal shopping. Oh and they have the whole computer angle, so they can come right out and say why their customers should buy Apple. "This will make your life easier." "This will make your son valedictorian at college." "This is more than just a computer. It's a white computer!" Abercrombie can't very well have their employees say equivalent things, i.e. what will happen if you buy their products. "Your son will get his ass grabbed by other boys at school if he wears these cargo pants made out of Egyptian cotton." "If your daughter wears this so-called clothing to tutorials, her teacher will want to do something illegal." Doesn't work with Abercrombie. I'm getting way off track....??
But back to Apple, I'm probably just repeating myself. Also, I'm probably repeating myself. But as stuck up as Apple's in-store marketing may be, I still am super excited to get an iMac on Aug. 1. And I'd probably get an iPhone if they worked with Verizon's network, since my current phone's software was designed by a guy who has never used an electronic device in his life. Actually wait that's impossible.
