I have been stacking up the iPhone and iPad packaging for a while. Each time I take them to throwaway, I am so in love with the packaging, I keep them back. That’s called Branding and emotional attachment 🙂 How can companies make products and dreams that would make you keep the packaging? The more I think about it, the more I appreciate Apple to lead the way for other retailer and tech companies.

For any product manager, this is a very complex problem to solve and everyone wants to live up to create that brand. In my view, there are couple of things that Apple does very effectively.

• Focus on 80% of the use cases and find simple solutions (not on the other 20%)
• Manufacture the need and love for users (be it iPhone or iPad)
• Do something audacious (market research is not always the answer. Market research can only provide ways to incremental innovation)
• Provide integrated marketing experience (emails, Apple Stores, Apple Website, TV Ads, Billboards, Blogs)
• Provide the human aspect of the problem (and don’t focus on the product itself)
• The end-to-end user experience counts (product information, demo, packaging, website, buying process, insurance, warranty, service and others)
• Provide use cases that user has not thought about (provide endless possibilities and make customer appreciate the design and thought process that has gone into the product)

I follow Google very closely and I use many internet products from them. I think What Apple if for Hardware, Google is for Software. I really hope there are more companies who takes care of the customers, design and the integrated experience.