Out to Lunch: A Bad Start for Apple on Black Friday.

Gary North

Nov. 25, 2011

On Thanksgiving, the buzz was everywhere on the web. Apple was going to offer great deals the next day. There would be iPad2s for $400 rather than $499.

So, since I am in the market for an iPad 2, and since I get up around 3 a.m., eastern time, I checked Apple's site. I saw this at 3:10:

That looked promising. The site's manager knew there would be traffic at 3 a.m. So, there was a click-through link. I clicked. I got this:

That didn't look promising.

Why would anyone add a Black Friday-based click-though image to a dead page? I mean really dead: nothing about why the site is down. Nothing about when to come back. No place to leave an email address. No redirect to a Facebook page. This is not what I would call aggressive marketing.

The stories started to hit by 4:30 a.m. There were good deals on the site.

So, I returned just before 5. The images indicated that the stories were true. There were deals galore. Anyway, there were images galore.

So, I again clicked the calendar image to buy. Guess what? The same message: "We'll be back soon."

This is not the way to run a business: "Out to lunch" at 5 a.m.

The writers of the "good deals" stories obviously did not click the link to verify the deals. There were no god deals. There were only promises, promises.

Steve Jobs is dead. This was the company's first major opportunity to demonstrate the company's continuing position as a marketing legend. This was the ideal time to do something creative. A "out to lunch" page is not creative. A dead page says: "asleep at the wheel." This was a blunder.

Maybe the senior managers will call it a feature, not a bug. Maybe they will say, "we were building up demand." Or, "this was not a blunder; this was our marketing plan." If so, I won't buy it. They will probably just ignore the whole thing.

At 5:20, I tried again. Lo and behold, there was a new image.

This time, I really could buy an iPad 2.

At retail.

I went though the ordering process. At first, I was offered it at $458.

Then I added a cover for $28. Let's see: $458 + $28 = $486. OK, I clicked to order.

I got this:

They were overcharging me by $13. Why? Because no one had beta-checked the offer.

Over to the right was another total: $458. Fine. But where was my $28 cover? It was not listed.

I ordered. Finally, the $28 cover did get listed. I got it for $486. But this was not clear from the beginning.

In short, everything was scrambled. When you confuse customers, you lose sales. So, beta-test the order procedure.

Over half a century ago, there was a hit song aimed at teenage girls, "Little Things Mean a Lot." The song was sappy, but the message was correct.

Positioning is crucial to any firm. For one of the most marketing-driven firms in history, the replacement managers at Apple must prove a point: they are as good as Steve Jobs was. They obviously aren't. Not even close.

Already, the process known as the routinization of charisma has already begun at Apple. Jobs has not been dead two months.

Note: Why did I buy it? Because I need it for a crucial software product, Doceri. You can see why here.