Apple iPhone 3GS = branding megafail
When it comes to branding, marketing, advertising, PR and the general concepts surrounding efforts to sell stuff, Apple is one of the best in the business — hands down. Love Apple products or hate them, there’s really no question it knows how design an attractive product and make it even more attractive using marcom. As such, the company is always meticulous with the messages it delivers, the wording it chooses and the quality of its marketing/advertising — well, almost always.
Its latest product, the iPhone 3GS, is a smash hit. It launched this past Friday in fewer countries than the iPhone 3G did last year and still managed to sell over a million handsets in its opening weekend — more units than its predecessor in fact. Remarkable. There is a major fault in Apple’s new handset however, that we likely wouldn’t have seen under Stevo’s watch: the branding. Yes, we’re sure Jobs played a major role in naming the device and we can’t believe “3GS” is what the crew in Cupertino landed on but considering how peculiar and unfriendly to search engines the name is, one would think the company would take particular care in referring to the handset. Nope. According to Apple, the official name of its new handset is “iPhone 3GS”. Fair enough. Take a look at Apple’s website at the time of this writing however, and you’ll find no less than a hundred references to the “iPhone 3G S” — with a space between the “3G” and the “S”. Crazy. This is also how the handset was presented when it was introduced earlier this month: “3G S”.
To be honest, we can’t remember ever having seen Apple fail so massively in this department. It may seem trivial but companies take branding extremely seriously for several reasons and all of these reasons play key roles in the marketing/sales processes. Apple is cleaning up its site and changing “3G S” to “3GS” but even now there are still a few omissions. The screen cap above was taken this morning and it shows less than a quarter of a page with four mistakes alone.
So welcome back, Mr. Jobs. Time to get to work.
Always hated that space in there. It’s weird, but when Jobs is gone, the mice do really appear to play. Not to say that Jobs would copyedit the site or anything, but I have a strong feeling this bush league stuff wouldn’t happen.
2nd!
I went to the site just now and it appears they changed the “iPhone 3G S” to the “iPhone 3GS”. Go to the site.
E-loser^
thIrD!
diS artiCle iS siLly ThoUgh LoL
who cares?!?!?
The fact is, in a year, we will have another new iPhone, with a new name. Does anyone really care? No
Yeah, who cares? Apple changes the name of their products after they’re released all the time… Idiot.
Apple probably spends more money/time/resources on branding and marketing than any competitor. This is a HUGE failure. I guarantee people will lose their jobs over this.
It’s not the biggest deal, it’s just funny that’s all. For a company so buttoned up, you’d think they would have solidified something even as little as the 3GS/3G S thing.
It isn’t like Apple is all we’re getting at…
so s. jobs is gone for half a year and they’re already messing things up? is the lack of new features in the iphone also a result of steve not contributing?
Not sure about ‘MEGAFAIL,’ but searching the 3G S phone brings up issues. Still, you can’t argue with selling 1 million+ phones.
No one’s arguing with selling a million phones. It’s just surprise being expressed at such bush-league indifference for a company that has made its mark on dotting their t’s and crossing their i’s.
What a stupid piece. The sold a million phones over the weekend. Hardly a branding misstep. I imagine Palm would love to committ such a marketing blunder.
Sounds like Jobs got back and couldn’t resist rolling heads and changing names just a little…to make sure everyone remembers who’s the Overlord.
Remember, you don’t need Flash until he tells you.
Why waste time and money on branding when you have millions of sheep waiting to lap up anything you serve them?
I wonder if its more of a coding fail then a branding fail. Maybe the space is there on the site so that a box could be coded around it (not sure if html has something like that or not).
As far as I know, I bought an “iPhone 3G S” and not an iPhone “3GS”. It says so all over the box it came with. I think they just realized how stupid it was to leave a space in between the G and the S and decided to go without it now.
Omg I can go to sleep at night now .
Psh .
Maybe they spaced it out, so little “Johnny wanna be lawyer” doesn’t take them to court…. and actually try to get a real 2for1 deal… Cause *****s is plural, meaning you get 2 or more 3g Iphones…. *****’s is possession, and ******_S is nothing…
Your griping about the space? Serious? Who cares! I’m more dissappointed inthe fact that not only did apple not change a single thing about the looks of the phone which I think is fine but they usually do something like try to make it thinner or add colors. Then they put that pointless compass and the voice recognition is alright but I’m pretty sure I can choose a song by hand. 3.0 was all I really needed. Now we are just waiting on AT&T to quite being douche bags and give us MMS already. Who gives a shit if they once had a space between th g and s. There are more important things to complain about.
Zach, seriously, you couldn’t find anything else to write about…
Hey, I’m looking for a couple of 3Gs and a 3GS phone. Know where I can buy them?
Sounds like the “fail” is in NOT having a space.
Thats some lame loser shit to bitch about. who the Fkuc cares.
Dumb. Dumb article. Seriously? Was this needed?
Who the F cares? Dumb and unineresting