So here we are, at the last week of our blog entries and we've decided to round it up with a bang. Over the past few weeks, we have introduced to you a number of advertisements and dissected their narrative elements to show how these elements have helped in the selling of products. However, the reality of the situation is that narrative tools may be employed outside of advertisements. After all, a sales pitch can take place at any point in time! So here it is, the story that Steve Jobs took that led to the entry of a product into an industry which was already wracked with intense rivalry, bought by 1.389 million customers within 1 year of its launch, and had snatched away 8.9% of the market with 24.89 million units sold by the end of 2008 - a mere 2 years after its launch: Apple's iPhone.
In order to fully appreciate the impact of the sales pitch, you must bring yourself to the time where smart phones were cumbersome and difficult to manage. A time where there was no touchscreen, where MP3 players were separate entities from their phone counterparts, and where phones were still just phones.
Now, Steve Jobs could have taken a different approach from the one he did. Like the countless number of sales executives that we encounter on a day-to-day basis, he could have simply cited the value proposition and benefits of the iPhone. If that were the case, the iPhone would not have succeeded in the manner that it had. Sales would have been slow.
Why? Well, how many potential customers would ask the following questions: "Why would I need a touchscreen? The stylus and keyboard on my current phone suits me fine!" and "Why would I need an MP3 player on my phone? My current MP3 player suits me perfectly"? Almost all of them would - Steve Jobs had created a phone that was unlike any other available at that point in time. It was something that was completely revolutionary, leading us to our next point: potential customers for new product categories do not know why they need a product.
It is precisely for this reason, that Steve Jobs had to employ the narrative tools that he did. He used the audience - us - as the characters of his story. At the beginning, he told a story about how we have been enslaved by the antagonists: the Motorolla Q, the Blackberry, the Palm Treo, the Nokia E62. "Smart phones that aren't all that smart". He begins to analyze the various antagonists and slowly, we begin to slowly realize how truly bad these smart phones are. As this dissecting occurs, the tension in the plot builds up. The audience agrees with Steve Jobs. Yes, those smart phones truly are horrendous. And then they ask the crucial question, bringing the story to the climax: Who can come down and save us poor damsels in distress from the evil that is the current smart phones?
POW! The revolutionary iPhone.
The plot truly was fairly simple:
1) Setting - Current Situation;
2) Characters - Us (Protagonists) and Available Smart Phones (Antagonists);
3) Plot - How available smart phones are inadequate;
4) Climax - So available smart phones are horrible, what choice do we have?;
5) Resolution - iPhone.
What follows the introduction was the happily ever after of how the iPhone resolves all the above-mentioned problems that smart phones were unable to address.
The story that Steve Jobs had presented was an introduction to his pitch. It was necessary for the audience to understand the context in which the iPhone is entering, so that we would see why we need the benefits that the iPhone provides. Moreover, Steve Jobs interacted with the audience with an engaging plot, motivating them to here out the salvation he provides.
Narratives are powerful. In this case, Steve Jobs' narrative had moved 24.89million people and counting. Earlier this year, Steve Jobs had recently presented his keynote on the Apple iPad. How many more people will he be moving?
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