Can you still remember the infamous iPhone queues and pilgrimages to Dresden, where Polish tech industry representatives and enthusiasts went to pick up a new smartphone on premiere day? I remember it perfectly, because it was not so long ago; 6-7 years ago, there was no other way to buy an iPhone for the first time than to go abroad. I also vividly remember how, working in an electro-market nearly a decade ago, Apple products were always treated differently than others, as they were covered by completely different distribution, different service channels, and a completely different in strictly commercial contacts “on the other side”.
Today it may seem that Apple products are normally available in Poland and we are treated like any other market, but that is not true. Yes, we can buy hardware and we have access to the vast majority of the company’s services (but not all of them), but so far Apple hasn’t had two things in Poland:
- official distribution outside of Apple.pl
- marketing machine
And if there is no official Apple Store in Poland, or at most its copies-substitutes, the marketing machine has only just started.
Apple Polska on YouTube. Feel the wind of change
The winds of change were already felt last year; Careful industry observers have certainly noticed that all of a sudden more and more Apple gear started popping up in Polish tech media and it started popping up when it premiered, and soon after. Indeed, Apple for the first time opened up to cooperation with representatives of the Polish media, which had not been the case before – as I mentioned above, anyone who wanted an iPhone on the day of his premiere had to go to Dresden for it, or (later) under the partner store to buy it as soon as possible. There was no access before the exit.
For us, industry representatives, this is of course an amazing simplification of work. For the average consumer, however, it’s a different kind of signal – here’s Apple starting to take care of good promotion of its products in Poland, something it never did before. If you’ve seen an Apple ad anywhere in Poland, it was usually ads from partner stores, not the Cupertino giant itself. It was only last year that Apple started making its presence felt in the media, and now it’s taking the second step – it’s entering Poland on YouTube.
Apple has just launched its official channel “Apple Polska”. There were 9 movies we already know on Apple’s foreign language channels, but this time they are available in our native language, although… so far in subtitles, no Polish complete.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if all-Polish promotional clips started appearing on subsequent product launches, just as I wouldn’t be surprised if these clips started appearing more often on TV or radio.
In other words: Apple is launching a marketing machine in Poland that wasn’t there before. And you should know that Apple’s marketing machine is the best of the best. The Cupertino giant does marketing like no other company. While most competitors are betting on a “more is better” strategy, bombarding us with advertisements from all corners that opening the fridge is scary, Apple does it in a much more thoughtful way. Advertisements are more subtle, as are product placements, for example in movies. It never happens that an Apple product is placed in a movie or a series in an insistent way, such as a dramatically poor placement in the Rodzinka.pl series. If a bitten apple appears on screen, it always happens naturally, intertwined with the plot or accentuated by proper framing and camerawork.
It is not without reason that bad guys say that Apple has no “customers”, only “followers”. The company has worked very hard to ignite its users to this point, and since it has gained so many in Poland without its (not)secret weapon, it’s scary to think what will happen when Apple kicks off all the marketing work with We.
Only one question remains: why does Apple advertise in Poland?
And there, I enter the domain of conjectures and hypotheses; I dust the crystal ball, look at the tea grounds and come to conclusions that may be completely wrong, but I’ll try – well, I have a theory that Apple has finally stopped considering us a third country world and will start making some serious money from us.
I don’t know why it happened. Was it the median of our winnings that finally reached the level after which the Cupertino tables lit up green? Or has the iPhone reached a high enough percentage of the market that it is worth committing more effort and resources? I have no idea. However, the fact remains that Apple does not launch the marketing machine out of the goodness of its heart, but with the aim of winning and attracting new customers… finally: for what?
My wildest guess is that in the near future we will have two premieres: the Polish Siri and the Polish Apple Store.
Poland Siri is not just guesswork – in 2020. Apple began assembling the team in Warsaw, responsible for creating the Polish version of the voice assistant. I can only guess that the outbreak of the pandemic put a stick in Apple’s shelves and changed all plans, but I don’t believe the Giant has completely abandoned those plans.
Poland Siri is not just voice assistant access on phones, tablets and computers. It is also the opening of Poland to the market for Homepods and other smart home accessories. This is an opportunity to offer the cheapest Apple Music Voice subscription threshold, voice-controlled from the speaker level. This is – here’s another hypothesis – another market that in the near future will be able to offer a voice assistant based on conversational artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, which Apple has been working on for a long time.
The Polish Apple Store theory is a little less grounded in reality, but I’m sure the company wouldn’t start marketing departments if it didn’t want to direct people somewhere. More precisely: at its own store, a real Apple Store, with a Genius Bar and laptops that open at a precise angle, as Steve Jobs ordered. It may seem that Polish retailers offer a similar experience to the Apple Store, but anyone who has visited the real “temple of a bitten apple” at least once knows how different this experience is. I would be very surprised if Apple’s plan – at least in the long term – was not to open at least such a “temple”, and perhaps an entire network in major cities.
Of course, these are only assumptions that do not have to be reflected in reality. However, Apple spends marketing money with us for something, and the marketing goal is always the same: to earn more. Fortunately, in Apple’s case, the desire to earn more also means the company will care even more about its customers. Polish Siri is in preparation. Apple Maps will start working with us soon as they work in other countries. Apple launches a YouTube channel. It is impossible not to notice that something is happening, and nothing happens without a reason.