Flip Side Of The Coin

In the same instant I was writing yesterday’s post about Coke BlãK disappearing from store shelves nationwide – no doubt to be sealed in the same abandoned mine shaft as the world’s unsold beanie babies, 462 million gallons of Crystal Pepsi and every E.T. game cartridge ever manufactured for the Atari 2600 – a debate was raging as to when Apple’s iPhone, the star of my next spec spot, would be filling all that empty retail space. It all started when technology blog Engadget, based on an email they received from a “trustworthy source”, erroneously reported that the phone’s annoyingly vague “sometime in June” release date was being pushed back to a far more annoying “sometime in October.” That was at 11:49AM. And as you can see in the stock ticker above, the effect was pretty much immediate – Apple’s stock suffered a four billion dollar hit.

Four billion. As in the combined population of China, India, Africa, and both Americas. As in the number of years it took for life to evolve on Earth. As in a four with nine zeroes after it. Four. Billion.

While the story was retracted almost immediately – right around the time the SEC launched a probe into who made a financial windfall resulting from this “prank” – its results give me hope. Granted, comparing the iPhone to Coke BlãK is like comparing Apples to…well…

Coke, actually. But to see that consumer interest in the iPhone has reached a level where availability delays result in a financial panic that outweighs the GDP of a small nation? That tells me this next commercial has a good chance of being seen. Or, at the very least, have a shelf life that’s longer than a year.