After Nearly 100 Hours in Line, San Francisco’s First iPhone 5

http://www.taskrabbit.com/blog/taskrabbit-news/after-nearly-100-hours-in-line-san-franciscos-first-iphone-5/

by zpj5005 • 14 years ago

28 24 14 years ago

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Ok, that is some epic PR right there. Nice job. I really like a creative campaign like that.

I was sort of wondering why one of the live flight tracking services didn't jump on the Shuttle fly by in the Bay Area today to provide live tracking of its location.

kanamekun• 14 years ago

This is really well done promotion and PR! You can see that TaskRabbit PR even hired TaskRabbits to create further good visuals: "TaskRabbits gave pastries to San Francisco’s iPhone 5 fans." This sort of focus on visuals is the mark of a true professional.

And also, all photos were posted online and are available for reporters to use for future stories. (The only thing that could make this better is if higher-rez versions were available online, for reporters to download and use in future stories.) Great job, guys!!

golakers• 14 years ago

Saw the line outside the Apple store here in Pasadena this morning and thought "Task Rabbit".

Now the REAL question, how much did this guy make for his 90 hours of standing in line???

kenferry• 14 years ago

$1500. He mentioned on twitter.

swang• 14 years ago

I was going to say, "it's in the article" then I went back and realized it's not in the post (I think it was in previous posts about it).

Kinda surprised since they could have done a lot of PR with, "THIS GUY MADE 1500!"

Permit• 14 years ago

I thought so too, but it turns out he only made about 16.70 an hour. All things considered it was decent enough for a one time thing, but thats really not that much money.

baddox2• 14 years ago

And, a few hours later, I queued up at the same Apple store and walked out of the store 20 minutes later with my iPhone 5. I suppose you can never know in advance, but this time they still had hundreds in stock at noon.

dmix• 14 years ago

The scarcity of iPhones at launch is a fabrication. The primal human instinct to be lured by scarcity even trumps rational minds.

baddox2• 14 years ago

It's not always a fabrication, it's just difficult to predict. It was quite difficult to get an iPhone 4S for many days after its release.

rhizome2• 14 years ago

Yep, my Facebook feed is filled with peoples' pictures of phones they bought at lunch today, even in time to snap a pic of the Space Shuttle flying over San Francisco.

eckyptang• 14 years ago

I genuinely don't get it. Can someone please explain why the hell anyone would queue up like this?

Food, water, medicine, supplies - yes.

Shiny telephone - no.

glhaynes• 14 years ago

They consider it fun, something to do, a chance to hang around for a little bit with some people that are interested in some of the same things they're interested in.

nicolethenerd• 14 years ago

This. When the iPhone 4 came out, I hung out in the queue for two hours even though I wasn't planning to purchase a phone (I was keeping a friend company who was in it for the long haul). It was a lot of fun and we met some cool people.

michielvoo• 14 years ago

In this particular case (Charlie H.) it's a PR stunt.

evanlivingston• 14 years ago

Doesn't this PR work underline the darker side of TaskRabbit, or at least clearly demonstrate that TakRabbit is leveraging income disparity to profit? That is, some people either want or need money enough that they are willing pull a 90 hour shift so someone else with spare money can get an expensive phone arbitrarily early.

brcrth• 14 years ago

So what's wrong with this? People are not being forced to do anything.

tfe• 14 years ago

Isn't that how our economy works?

rhizome2• 14 years ago

The entire concept of employment hinges on one person giving another money. Just because you can call it something scary-academic like "leveraging income disparity," doesn't change the facts and doesn't make it wrong. Where then is the darkness?

sbov• 14 years ago

If they were doing anything other than holding a place in line, maybe.

It has the potential to become exploitive, but until companies start hiring employees through task rabbit in batches of 90 hour shifts, I'm not going to worry about it.

biznickman• 14 years ago

This was a great PR stunt by task rabbit!

codex• 14 years ago

In an alternate universe, I spent five minutes pre-ordering my iPhone and had it by 9:30 a.m. I feel like such a chump. I should have hired a TaskRabbit to do that for me.

After Nearly 100 Hours in Line, San Francisco’s First iPhone 5

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