I’m surprised the rascals promoting booming gun sales have yet to resort to the most surefire way to increase revenue -- and I apologize to those of you reflexively groaning at my use of “booming” and “surefire” in connection with gun sales.
What does the gun industry need to do to increase sales?
Sell colored guns!
Yes, at the risk of sounding blatantly self-serving, it’s time Smith, Wesson and the rest of the ballistic bunch begin to “Use All The Crayons!” on all their hand cannons.
See, guns are almost uniformly gun colored. They’re all indistinguishable shades of gray, silver or black. It’s almost as boring as what Henry Ford in 1909 said about his Model T: “Any customer can have any color that he wants -- so long as it is black.”
Today everyone knows color -- not safety or mileage -- is the main deciding factor with any vehicle purchase.
Henry Ford has gone down in history as one of America’s greatest innovators, but Steve Jobs and his gang make him look like a piker.
Behold! I present to you the new iPhone 5c -- now available in lime! Blue! Red! Yellow! Orange and more!
Guns are bound to soon follow suit.
I may be the only person on the planet who thinks handguns and smart phones are practical twin products.
I do this because I’m visionary.
See, the trajectory of the device-devouring smart phone means logically that one day it will eliminate the need to carry anything else in your pockets -- keys, ID, money, pistols, etc. Thus, you’ll have guns that will be able to snap pictures and play songs and smart phones that’ll be able to ventilate would-be felons or suspicious Girl Scouts.
The Apple cultists will be lined up around the block for weeks.
Of course, careless function swappers might inadvertently stumble onto a prominent glitch and literally shoot their mouths off, but that will be a small price to pay for the the prestige of dying by status.
I’m spending an unwelcome amount of time thinking of new smart phones because there’s a new commercial nagging that two years is too long to wait for an upgrade.
<<Let me interrupt this post to check mine for a more family-friendly word for “bullcrap.”>>
That’s, uh . . . hooey! Piffle! Gobbledygook! Codswallop!
This marketing assault is coinciding with the pleadings of our 13-year-old daughter who is desperate to get her first smart phone. Why now?
Because now they come in colors!
It’s given me an opportunity to explain to her how the insidious theories of planned obsolescence work on the sucker public.
See, I contend Apple, for the good of humanity, should have stopped making new iPhones right after they perfected my 4-year-old iPhone 3g.
The smart phone achieved perfection when it came packed with the ability to take pictures, text, secure proper directions, surf the web, check e-mails and minute-by-minute monitor the Facebook relationship status of all those Kardashian kids.
Sure, there are nifty apps for people who enjoy games and artistic endeavors, but unless you’re a NASA engineer required to take time out from weekend tailgate activities to maneuver the International Space Station, most of us don’t need faster, bigger or more memory.
When reality show hillbillies have in their pockets the latest and greatest innovations it means we’ve reached product saturation.
That Apple is resorting to snazzy new colors as the primary sales tool means even they recognize the useful idea well is running dry.
So I’m urging you to, like me, resist the commercial pressures to upgrade your smart phone every two years.
Declining sales will force Apple to look for new places to innovate. As I’ve said, I’d like to see them devote just one year to making an iMotor, an internal combustion engine that doesn’t rely on antique 18th century technology.
Of course it’s only a theory. You’re welcome to shoot holes in it.
I only ask that if you do, you do so soon, before the geniuses at Apple offer less rhetorical options to do the shooting.
Related . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment