HomePod Positioning
A venerable Valley story doctor was brought to the patient’s bedside and, in short order, offered a simple remedy: Position the Mac as a Graphics Based Business System (GBBS). The Business System part was adman puffery meant to project gravitas, but the reference to graphics made unarguable sense: The Mac’s Graphical User Interface (GUI) was clearly a distinguishing factor at the time.
Everyone in the room loved the idea. Rather than take on the whole market, Apple would define and dominate a niche. As the Valley marketing sage put it (quoting Julius Caesar), better to be the chief of a small village in the Alps than second-in-command in Rome.
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Back to today: Is there an Alpine hamlet that the HomePod can claim as its own?
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Here, we have to pause and realize that the answers to the HomePod JTBD question are fragile and incomplete because the product itself is incomplete.
