Apple has struggled with marketing the Apple Vision Pro, and may not get back on track until there is a concrete and compelling use for the headset.
How is Apple marketing Apple Vision Pro?
The theory I learned when I studied marketing as part of my college computer course was that marketing is not advertising. Advertising promotes your product, and marketing involves finding the perfect audience for your product and then targeting your ads to that audience.
But another practical thing I remember is that you'll get the best results by choosing between the so-called rifle fire approach or the spray-and-pray approach. Apple has chosen neither for Apple Vision Pro.
At Rifle Shot, we target a specific audience that we know likes the kind of stuff we're making. For example, Nike targets runners with its shoes.
Spray-and-pray, on the other hand, involves throwing everything you can think of at people passing by and hoping something sticks. Or whether enough will stick with enough people and sell enough.
Apple can't just spray and pray because Apple Vision Pro is very expensive and has a self-imposed target audience. Before a viewer can think about whether or not the headset is worth buying, that viewer needs to be a viewer who can afford at least $3,499.
But Apple hasn't clearly defined its audience for the Apple Vision Pro, so it can't even shoot a rifle, or at least not very well. For example, today's Apple Watch is promoted with special emphasis on its health benefits.
The iPhone isn't particularly marketed, but since it's been around for 17 years, users are effectively choosing it for themselves. If you need a smartphone today, you've probably at least heard of the iPhone.
What Apple did with Apple Vision Pro
Perhaps the primary use for Apple Vision Pro, the killer app, will emerge as people get their hands on it. That's what happened with the Apple Watch, yet Apple had a plan when it launched the Watch in 2015.
Apple was targeting the fashion market, at least to a large extent. There was also a gold version, and fashionable stores in Paris sold watches and did much more than that, but fashion was a clear and distinct purpose.
Perhaps that's the wrong purpose, and the Apple Watch only became popular once its health benefits became mainstream and Apple's marketing focused on them.
But with Apple Vision Pro, Apple isn't targeting the wrong market either. It does a half-hearted spray-and-pray and still does it in a weird way.
Apple Vision Pro Advertisement
The obvious thing for marketing to do is increase sales. But there's more to it than that, and if it works well, it can set your product up for success both now and in the future.
Marketing's real job is to get us to consider a product, not to then reject it.
Just like a resume is for getting a job interview. It does not provide enough information for companies to decide that they are not interested in you.
Your resume can get you through the door, but after that it's up to you. Marketing drums the Apple Vision Pro and other products into our heads, but after that it's up to the device to prove its worth.
Apple did five things to promote Apple Vision Pro. First, apart from the release of the iPhone, Apple made an announcement at WWDC 2023, which attracts the most attention.
This is at least to be expected, and we've seen other companies go to great lengths to prevent buyers from equating Apple with headsets. Meta, for example, “accidentally” leaked its four-year plan for an AR headset just before WWDC.
Additionally, Apple released a well-produced 9-minute video introducing Apple Vision Pro at the time. This was probably the first real unveiling, but Apple didn't promote it or produce a TV spot.
Instead, Apple spent the next few months very carefully showing select journalists and other influencers in-person demonstrations of its well-made, well-conceived, and well-executed headset. .that speaks for itself Apple Insiderarranged the use of Apple Vision Pro without an Apple marketing representative, but there were some hands-on features that were more negative than others.
In-person demonstrations continued for several months until the day Apple announced the start date for pre-orders. Apple announced on January 8, 2024, the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show, that it would never participate, but it knew the announcement would make an impact.
Apple has chosen a critical time when early adopters, existing headset users, and technology fans are looking for news. The same thing happened when he announced that this product would be featured in all of his CES news articles, which ended up drowning out some of the devices that were actually on sale there.
Apple finally goes public
And a day after its high-profile announcement at CES, Apple is finally pitching to a non-tech audience. They ran a 30-second ad called “Get Ready.”
This was a smartly crafted ad that not only caught the eye of new people, but also gave something back to existing users. The ad consists of numerous clips from famous movies and quietly mimics a similar ad that Apple did for the original iPhone.
If you remember the addition of an iPhone, that was a nice touch. But even if they didn't, it didn't matter. The ad worked regardless.
It worked well in terms of getting people talking, and it got the name “Vision Pro” in front of people. Unlike the iPhone or Apple Watch, it's not a name that conveys anything.
This ad tells you absolutely nothing about Apple Vision Pro's capabilities. Just as her 2007 iPhone ad ended with her answering the iPhone's ringer, this ad shows a woman wearing a headset and looking at the home screen of an Apple Vision Pro. was drawn.
It's clear that it's the home screen, and it's clear that the screen contains apps, but there's not even remotely any mention of what you do with them, or how you do it .
strange timing
Apple has now released a new guided tour video, which is also well-done and shows us some details about Apple Vision Pro for the first time.
However, Apple released the video only on the pre-order date. Even if you didn't know about the headset until you saw this promotional video, by the time you got to the end, Apple Vision Pro was already sold out.
This is not a well-timed marketing campaign. Unless Apple actually wanted to take advantage of the pre-order traction and start putting the Apple Vision Pro in the minds of people who would buy it later.
Perhaps we'll look back on this launch and see this as a game well played for the long haul. And when I showed that guided tour video to people who knew nothing about headsets, they were impressed.
But at the same time, they ended up asking questions that could only be answered with “I don't know yet.”
This is unlike the iPhone, where everyone already understands the basic functionality and just wants to know how it works. We were able to give our iPhone audience a compelling taste of the iPhone's capabilities and make them want to learn more in a way that made them think they would use it.
So far, Apple's Apple Vision Pro marketing has tried to do something similar, but the problem is that few people already understand what the headset can do. Those who know are already interested, perhaps already invested, and perhaps he is the only one who has pre-ordered Apple's version.
In other words, Apple sold Apple Vision Pro to people it didn't need to sell to. They are an existing audience who, despite having been using headsets for years, are still effectively early adopters and actively searching for better devices.
What Apple isn't doing is marketing someone else — Apple Vision Pro isn't being marketed as a headset for the rest of us.
Despite the more public guided tour videos, that's probably intentional considering Apple may only be making fewer units compared to the iPhone.
But even among techies looking for what Apple is doing in this space, Apple's marketing isn't really telling them.
Apple Vision Pro can be used for so many purposes that it remains to be seen which one will become mainstream. And probably none of them work well enough to dominate one of them.
Until Apple Vision Pro is great in one thing, or until Apple Vision Pro buyers are drawn to one use, Apple's typically brilliant marketing team is going to struggle. Masu.
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