What a great way to start a week--magna-vindication coming from perhaps the king of Surprise Marketing, Steve Jobs.
Such is not the thinking merely of those here at Surprise Central, but of Forbes Magazine's very prolific Brian Caufield. In a piece entitled Steve Jobs' Greatest Surprises, Caulfield lays down these bons mots:
"Mark your calendars. Thanks to Steve Jobs, January has become the season of surprises for the technology industry.
"What's next? Nobody knows. That's what makes Apple so dangerous. The only certainty: Apple will surprise us with something during the first full week of January at MacWorld in San Francisco. Anything is possible. That's in large part because Apple has been so unpredictable over the past decade.
"Even the widely anticipated iPhone was a surprise. While reporters had teased out the new product's name, few guessed that Apple would introduce a touch-screen phone that didn't sport any buttons."
"What's next? Nobody knows. That's what makes Apple so dangerous. The only certainty: Apple will surprise us with something during the first full week of January at MacWorld in San Francisco. Anything is possible. That's in large part because Apple has been so unpredictable over the past decade.
"Even the widely anticipated iPhone was a surprise. While reporters had teased out the new product's name, few guessed that Apple would introduce a touch-screen phone that didn't sport any buttons."
Caufield goes on to present a fascinating slide show of Jobs' Greatest Pow! Moments (well, he doesn't call it exactly that...but all FOPs know what I mean). Check it out here.
So, the lesson once again:
- Any one Surprise doesn't last.
- TRUE Surprise requires a continuum;
- a shocking of the system again and again and again.
- It needs a constant discovery of a new extreme.
And NOBODY seems to do it better than Steve Jobs.
But someone does it almost as good.
And that someone will be bestowed with the title of Surprise Marketer of the Year for 2008.
The winner revealed right here on Friday.