So far, Apple is struggling to market Apple Vision Pro
Apple has floundered with its marketing for the Apple Vision Pro and it may not return to form until one specific, compelling use for the headset emerges.
What's up with Apple's marketing of the Apple Vision Pro?
The theory I learned when I studied marketing as part of a computer course at college was that marketing is not advertising. With advertising, you are promoting your wares, and with marketing you are finding the best audience for your produce before only then aiming ads at them.
But there is also one more practical thing I remember, which is that you get best results by either choosing what was called a rifle-shot approach, or a spray-and-pray one. Apple has chosen neither for the Apple Vision Pro.
With rifle shot, you are aiming at really specific audience that you know likes the kind of thing you're making. Nike targets runners with its shoes, for instance.
Whereas with spray-and-pray, you throw everything you can think of, you throw it at anyone passing by, and you hope that something sticks. Or that enough of it sticks to enough people that you manage to sell enough.
Apple can't do spray-and-pray because Apple Vision Pro is so expensive that it's got a self-limited audience. Before that audience even considers whether there is a value to them in buying the headset, that audience has to be one that can afford $3,499 or more.
But Apple also can't do rifle shot, or at least not very well, because there is no one defined audience for Apple Vision Pro. Today the Apple Watch is really specifically marketed on its health benefits, for instance.
The iPhone isn't so specifically marketed, but then the iPhone has had 17 years on sale so its audience is practically self-selecting. If you need a smartphone today, you have at least already heard of the iPhone.
What Apple has done with the Apple Vision Pro
Perhaps the main use, the killer app, for the Apple Vision Pro will emerge as people get their hands on it. That is what happened with the Apple Watch, but still Apple had a plan when they launched the Watch in 2015.
Apple aimed it at least in strong part to the fashion market. It had the gold version, it was selling the Watch in fashionable stores in Paris, it was doing more but fashion was a clear and distinct aim.
Arguably it was the wrong aim, and the Apple Watch only took off after the health benefits became dominant and Apple's marketing could focus on that.
But in the case of the Apple Vision Pro, Apple is not even aiming at a wrong market. It's doing a half-hearted spray-and-pray, and even then is doing it in a peculiar way.
Apple Vision Pro advertising
The obvious thing that marketing is supposed to do is get sales. But it does more than that, and when done well, it positions a product for success both now and in the future.
Marketing's real job is to get us to consider a product -- and not then reject it.
It's like the way a resume is meant to get you a job interview. It is not supposed to give companies enough information that they can decide not to bother with you.
The resume gets you through the door and then it's up to you. Marketing gets the Apple Vision Pro, or any product, into our heads and then it's up to the device to demonstrate its value.
Apple has done five things to publicize the Apple Vision Pro. First, it launched it at WWDC 2023, which apart from the iPhone releases, is when the most attention is focused on Apple.
That one was at least in the ball park, you could see other firms scrambling to do anything to stop buyers equating Apple with headsets. Meta "accidentally" leaked its AR headset four-year plan just before that WWDC, for instance.
Plus Apple did release a typically well-made video at the time, a nine-minute introduction to Apple Vision Pro. That was arguably the first really public unveiling, but Apple didn't push it, and didn't produce any TV spots for it.
Instead, Apple spent the next many months very carefully showing selected journalists and other influencers a well-made, well-thought-out and well-executed in-person demonstration of the headset. It's telling that AppleInsider, which arranged use of the Apple Vision Pro without Apple's marketing people, had a more negative hands-on feature than others did.
That business of in-person demonstrations continued over several months, up to and beyond the day that Apple announced a date for pre-orders. Apple announced that on January 8, 2024, the first day of the Consumer Electronics Show that it never attends -- but which it knew it would make an impact at with this announcement.
Apple chose a key time when early adopters, existing headset users, and technology fans, would be looking for news. It also did it when announcing this product would get included in every CES news story, when it would also drown out some of the devices actually being launched there.
Finally, Apple goes public
Then the day after its CES-attention-grabbing announcement, Apple finally made its pitch to the audience who doesn't follow technology. It ran a 30-second ad called "Get Ready."
It's a smartly made ad, and as well as trying to just catch the eye of new people, it gave something back to existing users too. The ad consists of a slew of clips from famous films, quietly mimicking the similar ad Apple did for the original iPhone.
If you remembered the iPhone add, it was a nice touch. But if you didn't, it didn't matter -- the ad worked regardless.
It worked in the sense that it got people talking, and it got the name "Vision Pro" in front of them. Not that it's a name that conveys anything, unlike iPhone or Apple Watch.
What the ad didn't do was tell anyone anything at all about what Apple Vision Pro does. Just as the 2007 iPhone ad ended with a ringing iPhone being answered, so this showed a woman putting on the headset and seeing the Apple Vision Pro home screen.
It is clear that it's a home screen, it is clear that the screen includes apps, it is not remotely addressed what you might do with them -- or how.
Strange timing
Apple has now released a new guided tour video that is again well made, though, and it shows some details of the Apple Vision Pro for the very first time.
But Apple only released that video on pre-order day. If you didn't know about the headset until you caught that promo video, by the time you'd watched to the end, the Apple Vision Pro was already sold out.
That's not a well-timed marketing campaign. Unless, that is, Apple actually wanted to capitalize on what attention it was getting for pre-orders, and start to put Apple Vision Pro in the minds of people who'll buy later.
Maybe we'll look back at this launch and see it as a well-played long game. And showing that guided tour video to people who knew nothing of the headset did leave them impressed.
But it also left them asking questions to which the only answer was "we don't know yet."
This is not like the iPhone where everyone already gets what it basically does and just wants to know how it does it. You could leave the iPhone audience wanting more because you'd shown them a compelling taste of what it did and in such a way that you knew you'd use it.
So far Apple's Apple Vision Pro marketing has tried to do the same, and the problem is that few people already get what a headset can do. Those who do know are people who are already interesting, perhaps already invested -- and possibly the only people who pre-ordered Apple's version.
In other words, Apple has marketed the Apple Vision Pro to the people who they didn't need to market it to. They are the existing audience who, despite years of headsets, are still effectively early adopters and actively looking for better devices.
What Apple hasn't done is market anyone else -- Apple Vision Pro is not being marketed as the headset for the rest of us.
Given that Apple may only have made a few units, compared to the iPhone, maybe that's intentional, despite the more public-facing guided tour video.
Even among the technical audience that is looking for what Apple will do in this space, though, Apple's marketing hasn't really told them.
Apple Vision Pro can be used for so many things that it's not possible yet to figure out which one is going to dominate. And arguably it doesn't do any of them well enough that it can make one of them dominate.
Until Apple Vision Pro is spectacular at one thing, or until Apple Vision Pro buyers gravitate toward one use, Apple's usually exceptional marketing teams are floundering.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
I honestly think Apple wanted to float this idea and they have enough money to let it bomb and not worry about backlash. It's only affordable to people who have disposable income and want to flaunt being an Apple fan. This serves no purpose at the moment.
Could be wrong because if anything the OG Apple Watch and the first two or three versions of WatchOS were bad enough that the watch wound up being pointless.
Do you think Apple will keep this thing around for 5-10 years as a niche product when it costs them, not just massive amounts of cash in R&D, but also in human resources and manufacturing?
I would wager if this thing really doesn't take off in the next few years Apple will drop the product. Cook might be willing to hang on a bit longer since this is his first really big product launch since the Apple Watch but I could see the Vision Pro cancelled after 1-2 generations.
It's interesting how they have changed marketing from Spatial Computing to a media consumption device. It makes sense if you watched the Vision Pro demo that just dropped on YouTube. They spend all of 3 seconds talking about productivity. He literally just opens an email...doesn't even respond.
I thought for sure they would launch this with a AAA game. Gamers are great advocates for this technology. Getting them to adopt this brings in new developers and bridges the gap for the average consumer. But it is only launching with some movies.
I really just don't understand the point of this device and the price point only makes things worse. Why would I spend $3500 to watch movies in VR when I can spend $800-1000 for basically the same experience on any other VR headset? Even the Oculus has a Netflix app.
Meta has been trying for the better part of a decade to convince people VR/AR is the future. They have yet to deliver any viable use case outside of gaming and some niche commercial markets. I was hoping Apple would show us a truly compelling reason to buy their 'Vision'.
"I really just don't understand the point of this device" => I think Om Malik says it best
"I jokingly call Vision Pro Apple’s face computer, but for me, this is the future of television and how we will consume media. When I look at Vision Pro, I see, for now, a $4,000-reference home theater system. Regardless of what Apple says about “spatial computing” and “working” on Vision Pro, I believe this is the future of TV!"
A New Vision (Pro) Day – On my Om
Funny how everyone focuses on gaming.
IMHO, especially since it has the PRO moniker, professional use case will lead adoption before consumer adoption which will require a price drop broadly enable it.
The device may replace current devices in the AR/VR manufacturing and maintenance sectors.
The device will set the bar for resolution, speed, and amount of queasiness for all applications.
Lastly like everything thing else porn will lead consumer adoption.
Where they obviously made a mistake was not shipping an Apple Thunderbolt display in 2016. They totally miscalculated the PC industry again. The driver in the PC market are gamers and business, neither of which wanted high PPI displays. Apple thought monitors would go 200+ PPI in short order in 2016, 2017. Didn't happen and it took them 6 years to get the ASD out. The ASD would have been great for the Touch Bar MBPs. Also, Intel screwed them with the Thunderbolt 4 spec.
What's the difference between a "few years" and "5-10 years"? 2 generations could span 5 years...
Spatial computing is the number 1 feature for the VP. Apple devotes the first quarter of the apple.com Vision Pro section to it. That means it is for people who need or want to have a lot of display space so they can have lots of app views in front of them to do whatever they want to do.
In web-worker workflows, that potentially means lots of web browser views. A lot and visionOS Safari has to support the most current web-browsing standards. Files.app has to be more like Finder.app. Microsoft Office has to be featured like macOS MS Office instead of mobile Office. And, Terminal.app has to come. This is entirely within Apple's wheelhouse, and it's stupid to leave it out like they have with iPads. Don't care how they do it, like run a separate DarwinOS instance in a VM, firewalled off, whatever, but is necessary for productivity in a lot of fields. I can imagine Xcode being the last to come as it and its output of apps can crash the visionOS and having your face computer crash is not good.
Apple is running late with the software in visionOS. A lot of work to do to catchup to the 1st party software load as seen in iPadOS or macOS. So, the next 2 major revisions of visionOS will be big milestones for them. If they don't do it, yes, the product could be in trouble.
My 2 cents on this Apple headset "marketing" angle is that for these first generation products, what's really important is the fundamental user interface of the device. When Apple knows it got it right, it ships a minimum viable product. The most important thing is the user experience. Not features, not competition per se, not apps, it's the fundamental usability of the device. Everything is built on top of that, and that everything constitutes the platform.
The AirPods were really the experience of a convenient and reliable wireless ear buds. No syncing issues. No connection issues. Runtime met 95% of users' needs. They remain the smallest footprint wireless headphones on the market with the smallest cases. That was it. It wasn't the best sound or features. It was just the ease of use of connecting them to your phone and putting them away and into your pocket.
The Apple Watch fundamentally got the button design, wrist band design and charging design well done. It's a wearable where people have a lot of different tastes and Apple made it incredibility easy for users to use different bands. It was two sizes from the start. The charging was induction instead of pogo pin. Induction is a no fuss way of charging. Pogo pins? You have to clean both the pins and contacts and charging can still be iffy. There isn't a mystery to what the buttons do as it is immediately obvious what happens once they are used. Contrast this with the arcana of using a digital Watch with 3 or 4 buttons.
For the iPhone and iPad? It was simply near zero latency in directly manipulating the user interface with your finger. That's about it. Once they saw how well that worked, they hit a home run. That's why it was immediately obvious that thumb board smartphones were dead as soon as you used an iPhone. Features, apps and usage would spread out to all avenues because how easy it was to pull out of your pocket and use.
For the Vision Pro? It's the usability of hand and eye tracking. If they didn't get that right, they don't have a product. Their method for interacting with the virtual environment inside has to be incredibly easy and natural. If it is, all other features and uses will flow from it. You don't really need to specify use case - though Apple does perfunctorily - but you need to make it easy to use. Easy to use isn't using hand controllers.
There aren't going to be any triple A games for face computers, and obviously, the VP isn't a device to play games on. You don't buy a $3500 device to play games, especially a face computer where the SoC is 2 inches away from your eyeballs. It's not going to have the compute power just from being 2 inches away from your eyeballs. Games that don't tax the SoC much, sure. A full-on AAA game? At >1080p? Probably not.
This must be the current YouTube "influencer" culture or something. My son insists that companies like Disney, etc. will intentionally hire a sh*t director b/c they "know" the movie won't be a blockbuster. I just can't understand this thought process.
I'm so scared what the world will look like when these kids grow up and run it. Maybe they'll be too busy in the metaverse to mess up the realverse.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/best-desktop-computers/?sh=3fc07f2e80a9 Look at the prices the Apple Vision won't be under two grand probably not new.
It is interesting that gaming PC's are considered worthy of the 2 grand price.
Tell me you actually did not go there
Glad to see you at least got rid of the “Floundering” wording in the headline. I’ll chalk this one up to you never having tried Vision
instead we get “look how you can isolate from your family in order to connect with them when they’re gone.” Or “replace your family so you can watch by yourself” or “If your going to interrupt my isolated experience, here is a fake set of eyes to look at and feign attention while I continue browsing the internet in mixed reality mode.”
some areas they really should have prepared for are:
games.
Pokémon Go and half-life Alyx (or better, a sequel) should have been their back on announcement day.
expanding on the airplay abilities.
in the end, it is what it is. Gen 1 can’t change now. But the marketing can get honest and developer priorities can shift to lean into what headsets are great at.
so funny.
Agreed. There’s a lot going on.
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/03/12/cook-ordered-headset-launch-despite-warning/
Both Tim and Jeff will likely retire within 7 years and lightweight glasses with similar performance could be another 5 years out so they probably wanted to get things moving.
It serves a purpose just now, which is having an AR iPad. It can offer a personal cinema experience and a large display for iPad apps. That's a tough value proposition at $3500 for most people in the same way a $3500 iPad or TV would be but this is due to the display cost. This will come down in price over time like larger OLED displays have. An iPhone X OLED display is ~$100:
https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-x-screen
If they get the VP panels to this level, it cuts around $800 off the retail price. More would need cut down to get below $2k but they can easily give a team a $2k retail target and see what they can build. They can build an M1 Macbook Air for $999 retail so $2k to put it in a headset should be doable.
I could see the first two revisions coming with noticeable improvements to the form factor and price. 2025 AVP with M4 at $2499 and 25% reduction in weight would be able to ship over 5m units.