Must-see video: Sex, luxury and the $10,000 Apple Watch

If you haven’t seen the YouTube of Scott Galloway’s presentation at the DLD (Digital-Life-Design) conference in Munich earlier this year, you’re in for a treat.

Galloway is a professor of marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business, where he teaches brand strategy to second-year MBAs.

In the attached 16-minute video he handicaps — at breakneck speed — what he calls the four horsemen of tech: Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. His take on the first three are well worth watching, especially if you’ve sunk good money into Amazon or Google.

But to cut to the chase — and the winner — start at the 11 minute mark, where he makes the case, brilliantly, that Apple will become the first trillion-dollar brand.

A few of his zingers:

Luxury brands give you self-expressive benefit: “They signal something about you. This is not a timepiece [holding up his watch]. I have not wound it in five years. It’s my vain attempt to express Italian masculinity and signal that if you mate with me I’m more likely to take care of your offspring than someone wearing a Swatch watch.”
There are only three things we do in business: Appeal to the mind, the heart, and the desire to propagate. “As we move down the torso the margins get better.”
The core axiom of evolution: “Is men paying $150,000 for cars that can go 160 mph in domains where you can only go 55. It makes no sense. Women will continue to pay $600 for ergonomically impossible shoes to try and solicit inbound offers from those same men.”
Apple is the only tech company in history: “That has successfully migrated down that torso. It used to be the best computer. Then it sang to your heart with songs. Now it’s the ultimate self-expressive brand.”
Apple is going to be the biggest watch company in the world: “Who does it hurt? It hurts everybody.”

If you’re looking for relief from all the dumb things that have been written about the Apple Watch this week, read Benedict Evans’ Why is Apple making a gold watch?, Rene Ritchie’s Why the Apple Watch Edition exists and spend five minutes with Scott Galloway.