July 26 , 2008 , SatWhy do they camp in Apple’s store: fandom of the brand
By: Lisa Li, Candy Yang
Around 6pm Jul 18th, Zafka, as a Mac fan himself, sent over a link with excitement – fans started to queue up for the opening of the first Apple store in Beijing the next morning.
From the ‘live report’ on apple4us I realized the queuing people are not only hardcore fans but also very likely the opinion leaders (an important youth group for our research) on the most popular online communities of Apple fans (Beimac, apple4us, macx.cn).
Much interested in the fandom, Candy, one of the ethnographers of Youthology, decided to give it a go to meet the lovely fans to see who they are and discover their motivation.
‘Because we love Apple!’ — the reason for night queuing is as simple as ‘we are fans’.
- ‘I can never miss it – just like football fans never miss World Cup.’
- ‘As a fan of Apple, I just want to be the first batch to enter the store. I’m much excited to get a small queuing number!’ This lad bought a new tent on the day for the ‘camping’.
(photo by Candy)
Celebrate the same cult as part of the global apple fandom – ‘from online forums, we have always known that apple fans have this ‘queuing culture’. It’s the first time it comes to China, how can we not celebrate it with the same level of enthusiasm?’
Of course gifts are expected, but it is not the sole goal of coming.
(first batch, pix from tgbus)
(photo by candy)
Bonding of the fans; online communities the base (Beimac, Macx.cn, Apple4us); queuing as a party – ‘I feel I belong to a community.’ ‘I wear this t-shirt with Apple logo because I’m part of this fandom group.’ ‘I want to meet some of the big (in Chinese ‘Niu’) guys on the forum.’ ‘I just think it would be fun for a gathering with other fans.’
Pride as Apple owners/users – ‘coolest, individualistic, creative/innovative youth’; ‘we are different from the crowd!’”Apple products are really great…’
Find an interesting picture diary of about the night and the morning of Apple opening written by David Feng, one of the founders of Beimac > HERE
The next morning I had an appointment with a human factor specialist in IDEO in Sanlitun. 10 minutes to 10am, when I get off the taxi on Sanlitun Street, I saw some young people trotting towards the direction of the Apple store… Around 11am when I finally came to the spot, I was already about number 1,400 in the queue.
‘The consumers here are exactly the same as those in the other market… the same level of enthusiasm.’ When I further probe on what’s different about Chinese youth, the Apple staff from USA told me, ‘they are really spending a lot of time interacting with the products, rather than just browse.’
Very interestingly, my friend from IDEO soon came to me to verify an observation of the perception of Apple macbook as ‘nice-looking but not practical’ after she did a home visit with a Beijing businesswoman of 33 yrs old. I had to say the demographic profile matters. I’ve talked to many youth from 18-25 yrs, and Apple is often mentioned as one of the most aspired brands for youth. I once read a report on Chinese university students that finds Apple, together with IBM, Lenovo and Sony, are the most desired laptop brands (although Apple is still far from a most owned brand).
It’s true that the camping fandom was just that tens of people in number. But it’d be really interesting to know how these fans spread the love of brand to other people around them and through online community…
(photo by Candy)
so excited to see this blog… Good luck.
July 26th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
@ lisa & candy:
you have a fascinating web site!
however, you need to ask for some help with polishing the writing because sometimes it is not as clear as you would want it to be.
example:
“Very interestingly, my friend from IDEO soon came to me to verify an observation of the perception of Apple macbook as ‘nice-looking but not practical’ after she did a home visit with a Beijing businesswoman of 33 yrs old.”
Firstly, this quotation about ’substance vs style’ in contained in a paragraph that is about the (aspirational) status of the brand. The relationship between the objective & subjective content of the brand is not made clear in this paragraph (these two points should really be organized into an entirely different sequence).
Secondly, you make a bold assertion about a commonly accepted fact (style vs substance re macintosh laptops) that is not supported by any external citations, nor do you confirm this bold statement with any details from the (presumably unsuccessful demo) conducted during the home visit by your friend from IDEO.
In point of fact, the deep brand loyalty which underpins the Apple franchise is based precisely upon the idea that “it just works” (which is not an official Apple slogan but certainly is the Apple credo): many MANY empirical studies - conducted by experts ranging from ergonomics and financial accountants, to system administrators and application programmers - have emphatically demonstrated that apple computers offer more features for less money than any other computer brand.
There is a reason why every major *PC* computer magazine around the world (whether aimed at the consumer or the enterprise segment) consistently awards apple the prize for best machine & best operating system year after year!
And that reason is exactly the opposite of your strange & unsubstantiated assertion (as counter-factual as it is counter-intuitive!) that apple laptops are not “practical”.
By any rationale criterion macbooks are the PARAGON of practicality!
Nonetheless, to give you an answer to the question you raise in your headline (’why do they camp out’), the reason is very simple … because everyone knows that apple products are “Insanely Great.”
But what does that term actually mean?
The core ethos for apple products is that the ‘tools should not get in the way of the work.’ This is the idea of the sublime. To have a unity of the intention & of the result. The Zen-like feeling of transparency of language & thought.
When Marshall McLuhan - the father of ‘media-ology’ - famously said that “the medium is the message”, he contemplated only the (Kantian) possibility of technology being an active agent that intruded into the very structure of experience itself, in the same way that Einstein posited spacetime to be inescapably part of the very warp & woof of reality itself; McLuhan did not contemplate the possibility that technology could have the special (’passive’) ability to become so pure that it would transcend itself, that it would not divide the subject from the object, that it would pull itself out of the way (like Wittgenstein’s ladder) so that the creator and his creation were in direct, intimate contact with each other.
Intimacy. Trust. Clarity. Truth.
These are the Bauhaus qualities that Macintosh users /fervidly/ admire in their machines: the unity of form & function. The Macintosh is as much a work or art as it is a work of science (and not surprisingly, it dominates in both of these ‘pure’ fields!).
You will NEVER hear a PC user identify himself with his brand that way! And this is not a coincidence either. The reason that the Mac is so Zen-like has a lot to do with the biography of Steve Jobs himself: after he dropped out of college (as did Bill Gates), he travelled to India where he was deeply influenced by Buddhism before he returned to America (it is difficult to imagine the PC guys spending much time, if any at all, reflecting upon how whether or not man must conform to his tools, instead of the the other way around).
I think that your lack of familiarity with the Macintosh (as a cultural phenomenon) is the main reason its brand coherence eludes you for now, but i am sure that it will begin to make more sense after you study it more
…. anyways ….
all new journalistic ventures have teething problems, so your missteps are nothing to worry over.
i am sure that china youthology has a lot of success ahead of it!
if you would like help copy-editing & polishing your prose, i would be REALLY happy to volunteer!
please feel free to contact me via the email address embedded in this webform.
cheers: Zahadum
ps: if i may offer an editorial suggestion … during the Olympic Torch controversy, i think you missed a golden opportunity to complement your coverage of consumer brands with some coverage of china itself as a youth brand! One of the biggest criticisms/assumptions about chinese youth today is that consumerism will change the chinese national character in a way comparable to the damage done in the Cultural Revolution (ie severing important connections to the past glories). However as the famous video by a Fudan University student demonstrated, the out-pouring of feeling around (the media coverage of) the ‘Torch’ issue indicates that young chinese are able to simultaneously identify with both nationalism & consumerism in new and complex ways that will have broad implications in the coming years for both ‘product’ marketers and for ‘political’ marketers.
read this excellent article in The NewYorker magazine for a fascinating portrait of the students who created the chinese protest video:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all
July 28th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
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November 24th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
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February 17th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
[...] on. Yet, just bear in mind that even in Beijing as they do in Regents Street London, Chinese youth camp outside the store for this highly sought after piece of [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:39 am
camping outdoors is one of my favorite, it is quite relaxing to be with friends.~`:
July 13th, 2010 at 1:44 am