ChasNote

In David Pogue’s glowing review of the iPhone 3G S, he reminds us why creating a passionate — and irrational — love affair between our brands and our customers is more important than selling them on the rational merits of our product and its price, why direct-response advertising alone can’t succeed without brand marketing. Here’s how he describes the pre-3G S models of iPhone:

“Your emotions were swept away by everything Apple does so well: beauty, polish, elegance, simplicity and the thrill of interaction. (Those were not, ahem, phrases typically used to describe existing cellphones.)

“Meanwhile, your brain kept waving its little hand in the back of the classroom. ‘But the camera’s terrible!’ it would say. ‘It can’t record video! There’s no voice dialing! No copy and paste! The iPhone can’t even send picture messages — even $20 starter phones can do that!’

“But 21 million iPhone sales later, it’s become clear that the heart usually manages to shut the head up.”

The heart doesn’t operate in a vacuum, though; it’s only a handful of inches away from its more rational sister organ. I mean, the original iPhone had to work through some very left-brain pricing snafus. The right answer for marketers, especially as they shift more dollars to online, will require a balance between sparking an emotional fire with customers (the specialty of brand advertising) and delivering the goods at the right time and right price (the realm of direct-response marketing).

What’s equidistant from Madison Avenue and Mountain View — Topeka, Kansas?