If It Looks New, It Is New

Jenna Wortham, writing for the NYT Bits blog, on the allure of the iPhone 5C:

I told her that I’d been eyeing the gold one myself, even though I already had a perfectly good phone right now. She said the gold and silver ones looked nice, but that they weren’t flashy enough for her. Most people wouldn’t be able to immediately tell it was a gold iPhone simply by looking at it, she said.

“I want people to know that this is a new phone,” she said.

The interaction made me wonder if my knee-jerk reaction to the C-series phones was too hasty.

Like I wrote last week, in marketing, what looks new is new. If you don’t think the iPhone 5C is going to be a huge hit, call me up and let’s wager some money.

★ Monday, 16 September 2013