A date with dreamy jets

This past Saturday, July 7, 2007, marketers had a field day with the plethora of sevens in the date 7-7-07. A matching month, day, and year occurs only 12 times each century, just one out of every 3,043 days.

Courtesy of Wal-Mart, seven couples had free weddings Saturday at seven Supercenter stores. Papa John’s pizza held a sweepstakes with “777 ways to win.” And the Lake Las Vegas Ritz-Carlton offered a one-night package for a 7th floor deluxe room, a seven course dinner, 70 minute spa treatments, and a seven-themed breakfast for seven, uh, I mean two, all for only $777.

Companies are already making plans for August 8 next year. But Boeing didn’t have to wait. Yesterday Boeing had July 8, 2007 as their special day because Boeing unveiled a new jet airplane called the 787 Dreamliner. Fifteen thousand employees and customers got the first look in a hangar base in Everett, WA – Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001 but maybe four years after Mayor Daley closed Meigs Field Chicago wasn’t the first choice to launch a new jet – with 25,000 more watching from a downtown football stadium.

They have good reason to celebrate: Boeing has $110 billion worth of orders for 677 planes. Recent customers include Air Berlin, a German carrier, Aviation Lease and Finance Company of Kuwait, and Qantas Airways. Makes the iPhone launch seem like chump change!

The planes are popular because they are long-distance, the 800 model going 9,570 miles, and fuel-efficient, saving 20% over similarly-sized jets.

Alas what those 40,000 folks didn’t see on the rollout were 1,000 temporary fasteners that need to be replaced, and a half-empty fuselage that’s missing 60 miles of wiring and the avionics that still need to be installed and tested. But production is sold out through 2014, history’s biggest selling new commercial jet.

One jet that’s ready for prime time is at the other end of the spectrum. The Eclipse Aviation 500 is a business VLJ – very light jet – that seats six. Fully loaded with fuel it weighs under 6,000 lbs, and Eclipse is estimated to have $3 billion in advance orders making the 787 Dreamliner 82 times its weight and but only 37 times its order book.

Whatever date you use, it looks like both Eclipse and Boeing have come up with triple 7.

The hype behind the iPhone

On Friday at 6 p.m. local time, Apple will begin selling its iPhone to the public. The hype is impressive: Google shows over ninety million hits for Apple iPhone. Over ten thousand print articles have covered it. More than 48 hours ahead of the launch, customers are already lining up at some Apple stores, like the one on Fifth Avenue in New York.

Is this unusual? How often does a product like this come along?

Hype is never in short supply when it comes to new product introductions. In 1981, RCA announced that, with sales of just 52,000 units in five weeks, its VideoDisc system achieved the most successful introduction of any major electronic product in history. Right.

To reach the fifty million user benchmark it took the telephone 43 years, radio 38 years, TV 13 years, cable 10 years, and the Internet just 5 years. But some individual products blow this away: the Sony Walkman sold 300 million units in the 80s and 90s. And Apple’s iPod is on a steeper growth curve than the Walkman.

Here’s the math: when a hot new product or technology or even idea takes hold, for a certain period of time the growth is proportional to the number of units sold. For example, if 10,000 units have been sold, the growth rate is, say, 5,000. When the number of units grows to 20,000, the growth rate at that point is 10,000, and so on. The more units sold, the higher the growth rate.

Mathematicians call such growth “e to the x”. Obviously this can’t go on forever. At some point the growth rate slows, levels off, and declines as the product or idea matures and is then replaced by the next generation. But until then it’s a fun ride for the manufacturers and the customers, too.

One thing is for sure. With the introduction of the Macintosh computer in 1984, the iPod in 2001, and now the iPhone in 2007, Apple has a knack for going e to the x.

The Waiting Game

"We have good clocks in our heads for roughly three minutes," said Paco Underhill, founder of Envirosell, a retail consulting firm. "Once we get beyond that, time expands wildly. If somebody waits four and a half minutes and you ask them how long they waited, they'll say 15."

What's Paco talking about? Purchasing groceries of course! But Americans are used to waiting; a recent study finds we spent 48 hours every year just waiting in lines, and not just for groceries.

The top five waits?

#5: fast food restaurants – I guess the line is slow but the food is fast;
#4: airports – to get there faster you have to wait;
#3: hospitals and doctor's offices – I'm sure Michael Moore has something to say about this;
#2: retail stores – even when there's no debut of the iPhone; and
#1: the Dept. of Motor Vehicles – I wonder if Paris Hilton ever waits in line at DMV.

Improvements are being made: a Pittsburgh health clinic installed kiosks that reduce wait times by 80%. Gourmet supermarket chain Whole Foods now uses a single line that cuts wait time from 20 minutes down to four. Some USA airports now offer Clear cards – for $100 a year – that enable travelers to bypass long security lines.

So you might think everyone's in the fast lane now. But not at Disney. MIT Professor Richard Larson – an expert in queue theory – says that Disney understands waiting psychology. According to Larson, "You may be waiting 45 minutes to get to the ride, but the experience starts when you join the line, because of all the distractions and entertainment around you." Right – just like the DMV!

Ultimately, psychology may be the key: in NYC complaints about long waits for elevators plummet when mirrors are installed. Or maybe Apple should just give everyone an iPhone so we can all watch Paris Hilton on Larry King.