Blue Ocean Branding

Apple’s become quite the fixture in my blog lately much to my chagrin. Here goes another article about them, and all I can say is when you brand products this well it’s deserved when people are talking about.

What is Blue Ocean Branding?
I’m stepping a bit outside of what was intended in the Blue Ocean strategic product management philosophies outlined by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Their focuses were more on how an all up approach to creating a product that moved from a heavily fought area into an area where competitors had missed a market segment wherein their product with a unique value proposition could allow them to capture this segment.

My idea on Blue Ocean Branding is taking an existing product without changing it or with relatively minor changes refocusing the branding and messaging at a blue ocean space. This is not the same as what they’ve discussed previously and some may call it a “tacked-on approach” but we’ll see what value this kind of branding has given the example listed below.

Launching of the iPod Touch
When the Touch was released in September of 2007 it was focused primarily on updating the device look and feel for a music player, along with a secondary focus on a mobile browser and ability to receive content on the go with YouTube integration and iTunes Wi-Fi Music store.

Playing on the strengths of the iPhone the iPod Touch offered much of the value of the iPhone minus the cellular connection and AT&T service.

Personal Music Player Market Trends
This category has come under increased pressure due to 3 things:
• Apple’s previous success and large installed player base that is content with the product they already have.
• Zune and other lower cost device manufacturers trying to grab market-share placing downward pricing pressure on the entire category
• Phones and Mobile Internet Devices making huge inroads into this space

Where would the iPod Touch go?
The building blocks for this branding shift were available in the product from the day the iPod Touch was announced. but the ecosystem wasn’t in place until a full year after the launch.

Where was the iPod Touch going to go as the mp3 player was coming under attack? Into gaming.

Take a look at the current product pillars:
A great iPod
A great pocket computer
A great portable game player

There is hardly even a mention of the music player anymore in their marketing text. People already know the iPod plays music, the brand is synonymous with it in-fact.

Take a look into how they’re even defining iPod now:
iPod touch is music, movies, games, and apps. All at your fingertips.

Music may come first but its only one of four software/content offerings now.

iPod Touch as a Blue Ocean Branding Example
The product hasn’t changed since day one. The ecosystem built itself up around the product (I’m sure with more than a little bit of encouragement from Apple), but I really think the direction they went wasn’t a planned Blue Ocean strategy for this product. The focus and decision making has always been leading out with the phone but with 20 million iPod touches sold that’s too big of a market not to tap into.

In this case Apple looked around and had to wonder we have this shrinking product space, we have a device with some mobile computing power and capabilities where should we go with this? As the AppStore became attractive and developers rushed to be a part of this space they were given an opportunity to transition into a new space. This move by Apple created a blue ocean not just in the world of music players but also in the world of mobile gaming.

Conclusion
While there are some assumptions in this post (mainly around product planning of the iPod Touch) I do think this is a valid example of what I’m trying to get at. Unfortunately much like in the Blue Ocean Strategy book it is extremely hard to validate the assumption outside of the examples of reviewing publically available information (which I provided a link to above).

In this case, with minimal investment of time on product management, or new product design Apple has unlocked a new cash cow. By keeping the iPod Touch specs in-line with the iPhone from day one this opportunity was created.