Apple iPhone 3GS = branding megafail

By on Jun 23, 2009 at 5:07 PM
Opinions June 23, 2009

When it comes to branding, marketing, advertising, PR and the general concepts surrounding efforts to sell stuff, Apple is one of the best in the business — hands down. Love Apple products or hate them, there’s really no question it knows how design an attractive product and make it even more attractive using marcom. As such, the company is always meticulous with the messages it delivers, the wording it chooses and the quality of its marketing/advertising — well, almost always.

Its latest product, the iPhone 3GS, is a smash hit. It launched this past Friday in fewer countries than the iPhone 3G did last year and still managed to sell over a million handsets in its opening weekend — more units than its predecessor in fact. Remarkable. There is a major fault in Apple’s new handset however, that we likely wouldn’t have seen under Stevo’s watch: the branding. Yes, we’re sure Jobs played a major role in naming the device and we can’t believe “3GS” is what the crew in Cupertino landed on but considering how peculiar and unfriendly to search engines the name is, one would think the company would take particular care in referring to the handset. Nope. According to Apple, the official name of its new handset is “iPhone 3GS”. Fair enough. Take a look at Apple’s website at the time of this writing however, and you’ll find no less than a hundred references to the “iPhone 3G S” — with a space between the “3G” and the “S”. Crazy. This is also how the handset was presented when it was introduced earlier this month: “3G S”.

To be honest, we can’t remember ever having seen Apple fail so massively in this department. It may seem trivial but companies take branding extremely seriously for several reasons and all of these reasons play key roles in the marketing/sales processes. Apple is cleaning up its site and changing “3G S” to “3GS” but even now there are still a few omissions. The screen cap above was taken this morning and it shows less than a quarter of a page with four mistakes alone.

So welcome back, Mr. Jobs. Time to get to work.

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71 Comments

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  • http://www.quranclub.net Ikram Hadi

    +1 to this article.

  • NR

    Slow day for news, eh boys? This article is the MEGAFAIL. How about writing articles that are worth reading!

    Sent from my iPhone 3G… S

  • Don’t-hate

    I’m still getting mine this weekend.

  • http://www.webstudio914.com/web.htm galvatron

    you know BG woe could sell you search engine optimization on yahoo and google if you need more traffic.

  • Steve

    If you look at the same site now (2:17 EST 6/24), all of the spelling has been changed to iPhone 3GS.
    Thought that was interesting
    http://www.apple.com/iphone/

  • Dave

    Um, it’s probably because the iPhone 3G in plural form is iPhone 3Gs. Hence the space for the new product.

    Google searches already have exposed this.

  • Jeremiah

    I think the fail is in the naming itself. You seriously couldn’t make up a new name besides adding an “S” that could be easily confused for plural?? Oh and how about differentiating it cosmetically so that people can actually give a damn about it…

  • Erphan A.

    I think the big point BGR is trying to establish is that Apple made a mistake. They were inconsiderate to the people who research devices prior to purchasing them; mainly the people who use search engines. Apple is known greaatly for there great advertising techniques and Apple hasn’t really made any noticable mistakes for a while now. I’m not going to say that this little marketting glitch wouldn’t have happened if Steve Jobs were in the office but I’d guess the likelyness for someone to point it our and do something about it would be Steve. I found it funny that Apple changed the product name soon after Zach posted this article, thus directly implying, that Apple is aware of the flaw (why fix it if it’s not broken) and that they tryed to fix it.

  • duuuhg

    whats the big deal – you clowns make more spelling errors than Steve did all throughout grade school.

    ROOOFFLLL

  • ns

    What idiot actually needs to search about the new iphone. Go to apple.com. Done. Who cares what the names is? Everyone knows there is a new one out. Everyone, even my grandfather.

  • BDot

    Yea from a marketing perspective I think they could’ve done much better but (like the article mentions) this is Apple we’re talking about here.

    Even in the midst of their “branding mega fail” they’ve moved over 1 million 3GS’s. Not too bad for something that’s pretty much an incremental upgrade over the 3G.

    A true testament to the power of that shiny Apple logo.

  • MarxAnth

    Another mega fail article from Zach.. GS.. G S.. a million units later..

  • Ben

    Why would anyone care? This is a non issue

  • Mikee

    Is this website anti-space bar?

  • in_the_trenches

    Really? This is worth an article? As much as the anti-apple fanboi in me wants to rail against the Iphone, I’ll just critique the value of a post that, even after reading it a second time, I don’t sense any tongue-in-cheek tone to warrant posting that a space will affect my customers (3 and counting, been open an hour) asking about “the new Iphone.”

  • JustMe

    Just in case anyone cares, AT&T’s website has it as the 3G S still.. :)

  • gokmengs

    Zach Epstein= Mega Exaggarator
    How big of a deal is this that warrants a frickin post here on BGR. Anyone noticing the diminishing quality?
    Posted from Bold

  • Joe

    Screw the branding. How about making the Voice control app work on the new 3GS? This was a new feature on the 3GS and it is rarely accurate

  • Tony

    Wow, I have never seen such trash spewed about an article. Barely an ounce of respect for someone’s work.

  • JakeyBoy

    guess my observations about Zach were correct. isn’t the logo 3G[S] though ( the “s” being in a square, not brackets)…so really is there a need for this blog? oh wait, by reading what most people said…

  • NiTeSHiFT

    It kinda reminds me of rebranding the MacBook Alu-Edition to MacBook Pro…

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