Apple iPhone Cult Brand Profile

With enough word-of-mouth to make snakes get off the plane and enough hype to have many bloggers dub it the Jesus Phone, the iPhone launched to camped-out crowds nationwide. It didn’t, as one cartoon in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette joked, have the ability to cure cancer, end global warming, or block Paris Hilton from the news, but it did make die hard fans beam like little kids, and hail it as a revolution.

The launch wasn’t without complaint: activation delays, a lack of stellar call quality, trouble synching e-mail and calendars, and lack of business support. Some didn’t see the big deal; Chad Garrett, Treo junkie and blogger on Vox.com, wrote, “Yup, Jen and I returned the iPhone yesterday. You probably think we are crazy, but really it just does not do anything ‘special’. A $50 Motorolla Razr has more functionality than the iPhone.”

But Apple has always had its detractors and their complaints have always been lackluster compared to the gushing recommendations of its fans. Leander Kahney, managing editor at Wired News and author of the Cult of Mac blog, proclaimed, “The iPhone is gadget heaven. It really does restore your sense of childlike wonder … It’s CrackBerry for the masses. Finally, mobile email, messaging and web browsing is fun and easy—how did it take so long? I’ve had a Treo and cell phone email for years, but never, ever used them—they’re a mess. Now I’m an iPhone text addict—a 41-year-old acting like a teenager.”

Steve Jobs and his crew donned their earbuds and drowned out the sounds of the pessimistic crowds that claimed the price point was too high; instead they played their own beat and redefined the market. The goal wasn’t a phone that plays music; it was a multimedia connectivity device that allows you to tune into your own personal world with a sophisticated and stylish device: your music, your personally-generated content, and your friends all in one place, the way you want it. Price became a non-issue.

And, it was irresistible: “When I showed the iPhone to people … the most common reaction was, ‘I have to have this,’ sometimes followed by a quick, if alarmingly reckless, consideration of what might need to be pawned in order to make the purchase,” observed Newsweek senior editor Steven Levy.

Apple reported sales of 270,000 units in the first day and a half, placing it in the neighborhood of Gene Munster’s first weekend prediction of 500,000. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel claimed, “We've sold more iPhones in the first weekend than we've sold in the first month of any other wireless device in AT&T's history.” And the users are ecstatic: a study conducted by Interpret, a Santa-Monica-based marketing research company, reported 90% of buyers being “extremely” or “very” satisfied, and 85% being “extremely” or “very” likely to recommend.

How could a product that could never live up to all its hype still satisfy so many customers? The same way Apple always stuns its fans with the thing that matters most: the user experience. David Pogue in the New York Times wrote, “The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style … But even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years. It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles.” The interface was so easy, efficient, and intuitive that no one needed to read an instruction manual; the keyboard worked better than anyone expected. And, this hype-surpassing ease of use got people talking: a video of a two-year-old figuring it out made its way onto YouTube; a 64-year-old blogger under the name jitexas wrote, “The device has to be experienced to appreciate the elegance and simplicity of the touch interface … The interface just forces intuitive use on the most timid user. [I] watched a lady over the weekend who can barely operate a microwave pick up my iPhone, play with it for a bit, call a friend, watch a U-Tube movie, listen to a couple tracks and send an email to another friend all with no user manual and virtually no help from me..”

Its favorable reception wasn’t a stroke of luck. Like many successful companies, Apple has pushed the limits and failed: the Macintosh Portable, the Newton, and even the iPod, which wasn’t a hit until after the release of the third generation. By being daring, Apple has come to understand what its customers value in a way companies who walk a path of the comfortable and predictable never will. Apple knows its products must not only be functional but also fun for its customers; and fun in a way that keeps up with the demands of its customer’s lifestyles. As Donald Norman, co-director of the Seabrook Institute at Northwestern, commented, “Apple says, ‘We’re not selling to the person who lives on his BlackBerry, we’re selling to the person who listens to music and surfs the Web.’” Their customers consume and create media like it’s oxygen.

The fears of companies like Sprint, which issued a series of talking points for its employees to lure customers to its phones, and Palm, which hoped returns of the iPhones would benefit them, were justified. The iPhone was the success that Apple had planned. Its launch not only revolutionized the industry—other companies are sure to be playing catch-up to create similar multimedia devices—but it also solidified Apple’s value to its fans: Apple knows what your world demands.