The day the earth stood still at 6pm local time.

Yes, I got an iPhone. (Picture taken with iPhone.) Then I got a bad summer cold. That’s nature seeking balance.

Yes, it’s brilliant.

But enough about the product.

I’m still thinking about June 29. I’m thinking about the day, the event. Because Apple didn’t have to stir up all that commotion to launch the iPhone. When we were helping launch VW's New Beetle, there was a good argument to be made for not doing any marketing, as “the product will sell itself.”

But there’s so much more to June 29 than just the iPhone.

By creating an event, Apple creates additional opportunities to incite its customers, broaden appeal, and most important -- learn a heck of a lot more about its earliest adopters that it might not otherwise learn by playing it safe.

For me, the lessons of June 29 are:

1:  Great products draw crowds. Seems obvious enough. We’ve seen it with PSP, Wii and now iPhone. But who stood in line for the Zune? It seems a fanatical devotion to product elicits good karma. Maybe the iPhone was an anomaly in that so many of us Apple fans had been clamoring for the iPhone for so long. But I saw a lot of Viao and Dell laptops while waiting in line.

2:  Stage management is everything. Witness not one but two 20+ minute training videos on Apple.com in the days leading up to June 29. Training videos???!! Training videos watched by how many hundreds of thousands???!!!! Kudos for the videos’ simplicity, clarity and watch-ability. Kudos for timing their release. Though I wish the vids had been easier to share via social networks.

3:  Overstaff launch day. I stood in line for less than three hours at the Southdale Mall Apple Store (one of four Apple Stores in the Minneapolis area). It was quite pleasant. There were easily 20+ Apple staff wandering the rope lines, distributing water, answering questions—except for the obvious one (How many do you have in stock?).

By creating an event around June 29, by synchronizing product distribution, marketing, media relations, employee training, etc., Apple must now know:

     + More about their earliest adopters than ever.

     + Where their earliest adopters live, what forms of payment they use, what their appetite is for product (4GB vs. 8GB, one unit versus two).

     + How quickly adopters will buy, then register a product – and on what platforms they register, as well as when they register.

And all this is just the info gleaned from Apple’s own stores. Never mind what kind of data they gather via AT&T. It would be very interesting to read the recap on sales per city/region and the breakdown of Apple Store vs. AT&T Store.

So now Apple is in a much better position to:

     - Efficiently and effectively distribute future products.

     - Forecast demand and adoption.

     - Segment sales between bricks and clicks, as well as amongst Apple bricks and partner (AT&T) bricks.

Finally, there’s the larger value of story.

On June 29, Apple created community, conversation, and an opportunity to learn. On June 29 they launched more than just product. On June 29 they continued to refine and evolve that intangible asset we call their brand.