Laura Ries Harsh About The iPhone

You may have already read a comment about Laura Ries and her personal blog The Origin Of Brands in the last Petr Váňa´s post. Petr mentioned Laura in connection with the way she´s been pounding the iPhone and the hype that´s been revolving around this new "all-in-one" cool device by Apple.
Having read Petr´s post, I realized it was about time to introduce Laura Ries and her blog in a broader view and also drop down a few notes on her father Al Ries - arguably one of the most recognized branding gurus of the modern marketing era.

But let´s take a closer look at Laura now. She describes herself as marketing guru, consultant, bestselling author, and speaker. She is president of Ries & Ries, an Atlanta-based marketing strategy firm that she runs with her father Al Ries with whom she have consulted with many Fortune 500 companies. The father-doughter tandem have also written four highly acclaimed books: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding (1998), The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding (2000), The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR (2002) and The Origin of Brands (2004). So much for Laura´s bio.

Lara´s blog is, in my opinion, one of the best branding related places you can find on the web, containing some damn good exercise stuff for a marketer´s brain. Under one focused theme -- branding is about divergence and simplicity, not about convergence and complexity -- she keeps a high quality of her posts which are being read and spread among hosts of marketing pros and enthusiasts around the globe. No wonder, when one of her favorite hot topics, especially in the last days, has been giving a hard time to Apples´s newest product - the iPhone. She´s already posted several articles, trying to cool down the incredible iPhone hype we all have been witnessing in the last weeks and months. Of course she´s going after Apple because if iPhone succeeded and met its ambitious sales objectives (Steve Jobs announced he wanted to sell 10 mil. iPhones by the end of 2008), the Ries and Ries big theory of divergence would take some deadly fire, and, eventually, would demean both branding gurus in the eyes of marketing experts. And that would be no good for their own Ries and Ries father-doughter "brand", not mentioning their own business, would it?

TG


Here´a few bulletpoints with Laura´s main iPod´s counter-argumentation:

- The iPhone is the opposite of the iPod. The iPhone is a convergence product. It tires to combine multiple functions into one device. It is also nothing new. There have been many convergence devices in the past and all have been failures. Including: ROKR, N-Gage and the Nokia Communicator.

- Convergence products capture the imagination of the media and public but the devices can never deliver on their promise of nirvana because all convergence devices are doomed by compromise.

- iPhone is not really the Jesus phone, the iPhone is just another smartphone. It is not even the first smartphone (the way the iPod was the first high-capacity music player.) It is not different, just dressed up a bit.

- Apple has brought us many revolutionary products over the years from the Apple II to the Macintosh to the iPod. Unfortunately, I don’t think the iPhone will be one of them.