11.17.2004

Sears and KMart?

Wow, two dying brands merging together. Wonder what that means for Wal-mart and Whirlpool?

Speaking of brands, from Sunday's New York Times Business section...

"Late last month, Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chairman, rented an ornate theater here to promote Apple's latest advertisement for its iPod music player - a crisp psychedelic montage of the Irish pop band U2 playing "Vertigo," a song from its next album. Unlike the 1984 commercial, this one is intended to help Apple preserve a big, and growing, lead in the marketplace.
Speaking just after the event, Bono, U2's lead singer, said the band was not charging Apple a penny to be in the ad. (The band says it had turned down as much as $23 million to use its music in other commercials.) In its three-year life, the iPod has achieved such "iconic value," Bono said, that U2 gets as much value as Apple does from the commercial, by promoting its music and the new Red and Black U2 edition of the iPod, for which the band gets royalties."

Wow. Kudos to Apple for its innovation process that allowed it to launch a product like iPod. I wonder what their marketing research looked like back in 2000?


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