Marketing Profs

Imagine your name is Steve.

As in Steve Jobs. Head honcho at Apple.

Imagine you're in a shareholders meeting and you've just made a statement—apparently so dramatic, that for the first 33 seconds all you hear is dead silence.

Then suddenly the shareholders go berserk. They start shouting. Some resort to swearing. Others flip you the bird. A box containing Windows XP flies at you as you hastily duck behind the podium.

Heck... this is nasty stuff.

And all this nastiness and frustration seemed to erupt when you made the mistake of saying that the iPod was going to go after just one target audience.

One target audience? What kind of fool talk is that? Oh yeah, we know all those darn marketers say that you should have just one audience. What do they know? Imagine trying to sell the iPod to just teenagers. Or just travelers.

Of course we now know that the iPod is literally a necessity with travelers, teenagers, fitness fanatics, students, business executives and, yes, even grandmas and grandpas. So did the iPod break the rules of staying with one target audience? And how can you argue with one billion dollars in sales? Have all those marketing gurus got their brains filled with sawdust?

Noooooo.... Find out how the iPod looked at "target audience" in a different way. And how you can do not just the same, but actually do one better.

What's lesson 101 in marketing?