A couple of days ago on October 27^th, pre-orders for the brand-new iPhone X began. The iPhone X marks the 10th-year anniversary of the release of the first iPhone, something that has completely revolutionized the face of the earth since its creation. This new iPhone will be quite expensive at around $1500 CAD per phone. As a result, many people may buy the recently released iPhone 8 and 8 plus, which began shipment on September 22^nd. So far, the iPhone has followed a numerical sequence of numbers, which begs the question: what happened to the iPhone 9?

Source: Wccftech

 

There are a lot of different theories on why the iPhone 9 was never produced. Some say that Apple really wanted to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the iPhone. This could be the reason Apple named it the “X” and not the “10” as they could potentially release the iPhone 9 at a future date. However, I personally believe this is simply a smart marketing trick from Apple’s headquarters.

 

The number 10 is considered a major milestone, especially in business. It marks the first time your company or products have been alive for a year containing double digits. In the eyes of consumers, this is also a big deal and they will typically be willing to pay more or wait longer for this milestone. This is because they will usually expect companies to make their products much better than ever before. Looking at McGrath’s Transient Advantage Theory, Apple has been following this method quite closely by ramping up a new product each year and capitalizing on it until the release of the next best thing. It’s very likely that the advantage for the iPhone 9 would be very small and most people would rather save their money to by the much more impressive sounding iPhone 10, or in this case, “X”.

 

Apple isn’t the first company to do this either. On July 29^th, 2015, Windows announced Windows 10, which followed the Windows 8 upgrade. Once again this could have been for a couple of reasons. First off, the number 9 is considered unlucky in Japan and with the significant presence Microsoft has there; the jump would be a smart move on their behalf. The more likely reason was that Microsoft wanted to encourage the majority of their customers who don’t upgrade to the newest product right away, to start upgrading. If they were still on Windows 7 when Windows 8 came out, that would be fine, but if Windows 10 came out, they would feel more pressure to upgrade, giving Microsoft more revenue.

 

So there’s the answer. There is no iPhone 9 because of simple, yet powerful marketing tools and worldwide superstition.

Source: Vorply

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Many businesses credit their success to long-term finance, marketing, strategy, or management. However, business is an unpredictable world with some of the greatest gains and losses happening in a very short period of time. In fact, just this week, Dove essentially destroyed their entire 10 year-long campaign in just 3 seconds.

 

A new advert released on social media on October 6^th portrayed a black woman turning into a white woman, as shown below. This picture went viral very quickly as many people believed it was highly offensive to people of colour and a direct attack against Dove’s very own campaign. Many were reminded of similar racist soap ads in the 19^th century where black people were depicted washing themselves and turning white. Dove quickly removed their ad from Facebook and publicly apologized over Twitter saying they “missed the mark in representing woman of color thoughtfully”.

Source: Toronto Star

 

One thing to consider about this ad is that the picture that went viral doesn’t show the full story. The full ad portrays the white woman turning into an Asian woman and then the ad repeats itself. The original ad was 13 seconds long with a 30 second ad on TV. Clearly, Dove did not intend to post a racist ad, rather they released perhaps the greatest marketing failure of 2017. Dove likely wanted to show how woman of all types and colour were equally beautiful as has been their campaign for a significant period of time. Despite this, with the first few seconds of the ad taken out of context, the damage was done with #DonewithDove trending on Twitter in multiple languages showing a significant movement to boycott the company.

 

What’s interesting about the ad was that the original black actress, Lola Ogunyemi, defended the company stating her time on set was “positive” and how “all of the women in the shoot understood the concept and overarching objective – to use [their] differences to highlight the fact that all skin deserves gentleness”. Regardless of how the ad was taken out of Dove’s original context, it’s very easy to see how this ad could have been very racist, so how did it pass through all the edits before release? Some attribute this to a lack of diversity in the workplace, something so crucial to large businesses around the world. Others say that there was a lack of consumer research and focus on downstream marketing as we learned about in class 11. Whatever the answer may be, it’s shocking that Dove would miss the mark so much and not see an issue with the ad before posting it. 3 seconds was all it took for Dove’s marketing team to damage the brand for years to come.

Source: CNBC

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