If the iphone is so good, why have I seen their commercials 50 times before the product is even available*? Granted, I have a DVR and I press play every time I see it while I'm fast forwarding over commercials. Also, I'm probably a member of the demographic Apple is going after. And I do watch an unhealthy amount of TV. Still, seems to me that Apple has spent a fortune hyping this thing. If it's that good, shouldn't they have used word of mouth (à la Google, Youtube or Myspace)?
Speaking of Youtube. During "The Loop" on Fox Sunday night (a great show by the way), I saw the first bad Apple iPhone commercial. Because of bad DVR planning, I was watching all the commercials, so perhaps that was the problem. However, I'm not forking over 600 hundred hard earned dollars to watch Youtube videos on my cell phone (especially factoring the obscene bandwidth charges). To me, that commercial was classing demand creation. We have a product, let's figure out how we can crate a demand for it.
It was like seing a nerd driving a Porsh or a fat guy driving a Smart car. The iPhone immediatly lost it's appeal. The reason for the iPhone Youtube commercial is because a Google exec is on the board of directors of Apple. Youtube (owned by Google) is spending stupid amounts of money making their videos viewable on the iPhone. So I guess the commercial was part of the deal.
*The iPhone will be available in the USA on June 29th. It will only be available in Canada when Rogers empties their warehouse full of Moto Razr phones (sarcasm). But the fact that the commercial isn't playing on Canadian TV makes me seeing it 50 times that more shocking (most American shows, such as the Simpsons, are simalcast on a Canadian network, and the Canadian network's commercial play on the American station).
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