While the geekerati made a big play of the reviews of the Apple Watch once Cupertino's embargo lifted, the tightly knit circle of influencers in the Bay Area might be sporting a number of review units and developer samples, the real action for Apple's product placement team is not on the VC-powered wrists of San Francisco, but on the mainstream cultural touchstones of media and megastardom in Hollywood, the Music Industry, and the world's Fashion Houses.
(Read Forbes' summary of the Apple Watch reviews).
While this isn't uncharted territory for Apple - the first iPad made an early public debut in a Stephen Colbert skit at the Grammys - the push be seen on the wrists of the powerful and the popular (as opposed to the online young and the restless start-ups) highlights once more the vision of the Apple Watch that Tim Cook is pushing.
The Apple Watch is fashion... it is status... it is being part of the 'in-crowd'... it is something far more than a smartwatch that lets you see your notifications.
(Read why Apple is not selling a smartwatch).
This shouldn't be news to anyone paying attention to the strategy on show in the build-up. While the Apple Watch is functional, the positioning of the device has focused on lifestyle, on culture, and on celebrity.
The latest addition to the celebrity roll call is singer Beyoncé. She joins Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry, Drake, Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld and a handful of others to push the Apple Watch into the luxury market space.
Hand-picked recipients of custom watches with the public waiting until June in many cases is a deliberate choice. It increases the social power of the Apple Watch, it creates buckets of advertising and social moments that would be far harder (and more expensive) to build on its own, and it increases the demand for the watch ahead of the public release. Perhaps more important for a proto-luxury brand, it creates a greater sense of exclusion if you do not have one of the watches.
Angela Ahrendts has said that the launch (and the marketing) of the Apple Watch is a unique case, and the traditional Apple launches with queues around the Apple Stores in the days ahead of a launch, people storming out with boxes held high, and a huge operation to stock every retail store with sufficient stock to sell a huge volume of hardware units, will continue. Of course it will, because the Apple TVs, iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks of the world are primarily tools to be used by everyone.
The Apple Watch is not about being an everyday swiss-army knife - there's a reason Karl Lagerfeld has his own custom-gold Apple Watch with gold milanese loop and not the Apple Watch Sport and a blue sports band. Even though many people will use it for that, Apple Watch is less about creating a brand new product line and more about a brand new feeling around Apple.
Everyone who pointed out that a smartwatch from Apple would not be a brand new territory for the company (in the way that the iPhone was) has been proven correct. The Apple Watch Sports edition is not changing the world, it's simply out there and doing the same job as every other smartwatch. The real change, the new product, is not the physicality of the Apple Watch, it is the aura around the Apple Watch.
Silicon Valley already loves that product. It already instinctively 'loves' Apple. It loves its shiny toys and web services. Success for the Apple Watch in that group is pretty much guaranteed. But that's not enough for Apple. The true product from Cupertino is not the wearable... it's the influence, the mystery, the magic, and the status. And success will be measured in the world's perception of Apple. Will it be mentioned in the same breath as Cartier, Ferrari, Tiffany, Rolex, Gucci, and the like?
The Apple Watch is transformative - it is Tim Cook's polyjuice potion. It will turn Cupertino from a technology company into a world-defining force of nature.
Silicon Valley has served Apple well, but now it's time for the big names to take over.
(Now read about Tim Cook's alchemy that can change the world).
