You think that any of those marketing decisions were hers? Or maybe they were the MARKETING team's decision. Marketing decided to give watches to Beyonce. Marketing decided that watches should be available in boutique stores. (Plus, Apple has ALWAYS given their gadgets to celebrities before launch. See Steven Colbert with his pre-release iPad at the Grammys.) Which is a whole separate department, headed by Phil Schiller. But you never see Phil blamed for marketing the watch. I've NEVER seen Phil blamed for the marketing of the watch. But Marketing decides that they want this to be an exclusive, fashion-y, affluent product, not the head of friggen retail.
Maybe the "this is what you're born to do" comment was a little much. But it's the typical "company rah rah" that happens before any kind of big event. Hell, Walmart makes all their employees sing a Walmart song in the mornings. It was a benign comment.
And the rollout. Obviously they couldn't ship the watches to every store. The roll out would be the worst in history if people lined up over night the store, then showed up and have a big giant guessing game for which watches they had in stock. Online-only was lightyears better than only having 2 or 3 of each model at any given store. This isn't anything Angela could have done. This would have been an operations problem, which would be Jeff Williams's problem. Or a supply chain problem, which would be Tim Cook's problem. Angela has nothing to do with supply chain. She was given X number of launch-day watches and told to sell them.
Regarding the reservation system: what do you honestly think would have been better than a reservation system? Showing up at your store of choice because maybe the watch you want is there? Apple has never sold a high-profile product with so many variants. So obviously they had to do things differently. I think Angela came up with a very pragmatic solution.
