No free marketing

You ever walk by rows of parked cars and noticed that plenty of them still have the dealership license plate frame affixed? That cannot be me! There is no way I am giving out free advertising space like that, no matter how excellent the deal was the selling dealership gave me. The positive Yelp review should be a good enough return gesture.

If I can safely de-badge my car - without leaving exposed holes in the sheetmetal, I totally would. Volkswagen should be paying me to advertise that the vehicles they make are worth buying.

A similar befuddlement happens when I see car enthusiasts put stickers of aftermarket part manufacturers onto their cars. Again, you would have to be paying me to have your company logo displayed and driven all over town. Unless of course I got that car part for free, then the gratis marketing is an appropriate quid pro quo.

I’m just saying: don’t give away something for free so easily! Think of the Uber drivers that run advertising boards on top of their cars: you think it’s for charity?

On the same principle, my mother has steadfastly refused to buy any clothing with logos on it. I’ve seen her seamstress hands painstakingly take logos off thread-by-thread, because the underlying shirt was bought on sale. It wasn’t a want of anonymity, but a purely business decision. If the world is run on advertising - see Google, Meta, etc, then us peasants should not give away marketing space for free.

If I ever start a YouTube channel, I’m taping up/blurring all branding, unless otherwise sponsored. Sorry, MacBook Pro: your signature Apple logo will have to go under the gaffer tape.

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Brick by brick.

iPhone X's 'notch' is marketing genius

There’s big hoopla going on about the iPhone X’s ‘notch’, the small peninsular area at the top of the OLED display that houses the front camera system and mic. For a phone that promises to be ‘all screen’ and ‘bezel-free’, the notch is a jarring design flaw that upends those stated facts. 

For sure Apple could’ve emulated others in the industry and provide just enough bezel space on top to house those critical elements. In a hyper competitive yet matured smartphone market where devices looks largely the same - there’s only so many variations of screen on a slab of alloy - Apple needed a differentiator. With iPhone X eschewing the iconic home button, the ‘notch’ is the replacement. 

It’s a genius marketing move, though I would hope over the protest of Jony Ive. I’d imagine the ‘notch’ and the camera ‘bump’ continues to annoy the heck out of him. 

It’s a brilliant PR move because with the ‘notch’ will become the defining symbol of a frontal area that otherwise lacks any other details - indeed it’s all screen. For the past decade the home button alone differentiated the iPhone out of a sea of copycats. From now on, the notch on the top of the display will do the same. Apple has already done so in it’s own materials: 

Personally, the notch bothers me because I’m a bit of perfectionist and anything askew isn’t my cup of tea. However, like most other consumers, I’ll buy an iPhone X and get accustomed to it in no time.