Dear CMO:
What could you have done?
Let’s see. You launched your product to great fanfare 10 weeks ago. And now – 10 weeks later – you have a lifetime’s worth of inventory gracing your warehouse shelves. What should you do?
1. Drop the price by $200 roughly two months after your launch, then give people who waited in line for your $600 phone a $100 spending spree – only good in your stores, of course.
2. Bundle the iPhone with your new iMac. Buy the computer, get the iPhone. What’s the price of the iPhone? Who knows and who cares? It’s part of a bundle.
3. Give away 200 DRM-free iTunes with the purchase of any iPhone, you know, just to get people aware of that whole DRM-free music thing you’re trying to push.
4. Give away 20 movies on your new iPhone. Or 10. Who says you have to give everybody the same amount?
5. Offer up a snowflake white Bluetooth headset that goes with your iPhone, throw in a few other accessories, maybe throw in a black mock turtle neck. Or not. Wham! You’ve got a soft bundle. If you’d sold your phones through Verizon, you would have known about this insidious idea.
6. Buy an iPhone and get Titanium Toast 8. Teach your customers how to put content from their Tivo’s on their iPhones.
7. Give a $100 discount to everybody who can prove they registered their iMac. Or to everyone who has bought two of your iMacs. Or three. Or who owns an iPod. Or two. Or who has bought thousands and thousands of iTunes.
8. Give an iPhone away to anyone who buys 200 complete albums. You might start a trend.
9. Drop the price $100 and give another $100 away to Project (RED). You know those guys, right?
10. Give us something new in software and keep the price at $600. Drop the “old” version down $100. Or even $200. Make it good only in the store.
What could you have done?
Regards.
