Whether Steve Jobs again turns an industry upside down with the iPad remains to be seen, but he clearly showcased management leadership and basic marketing lessons today at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (side note – interesting choice of venue/words: Enamorado con la yerba buena, comida cubana y las nalgas morenas (Cypress Hill). Well, Steve?).

But I digress. Not a single announcement was posted by Apple, but the media and tech industry speculated wildly about the potential implications of a potential product. Newspapers like the NY Times or WSJ are ready to push content to the product (before they knew it existed), as did many others and developers are getting ready to feed the app store with customized programs.

Good luck beating that tonight, Obama.

Some of the lessons of how Apple managed the campaign?

– Jump in: As industry observers have pointed out, apple prefers to not beta test anything and just come out with a product when it feels good and ready and have the world see for itself. Buyers waited 5 hours at the Apple cube on Fifth Avenue when the iPhone first came out and will do it again for this pet.

– Simplicity of One: A friend of mine over lunch last week told me it took his one year old son less than one minute to unlock his iPhone… first he turned it around, then he mouth-tested it for good measure, then he found the one and only button and pressed it. Then he followed the blinking arrow and started moving his finger with it until he had unlocked it. The Blackberry business generation has problems figuring out how to use one button, babies don’t – also one of the reasons by the way why the simplicity of Google’s search box helped it achieve $6.5 billion in 2009 profits, one of the worst years in business, period (picking a fight with China, less ideal).

– Communication/cult: Yes, Apple is a bit of a cult, but the consistency of its message and quality of its staff from top to bottom make it consistent across the board. First hand experience: although my MacBook Pro died this past weekend (along with key documents) I somehow don’t hold it against them to a degree to which I would scream and raise hell with my Lenovo laptop and Microsoft.

– Brand/risks: Apple has taken risks throughout its corporate history and the ups and downs of Steve Jobs are a testament to those risks (and single-mindedness). Yet, aside from Warren Buffett he is one of the few untarnished, popular and widely respected business leaders worldwide – Tiger won’t stop falling from grace, Lloyd Blankfein is trying to save the family name and Obama is involuntarily competing with a “former nude centrefold”.

Side note, #2: the whole issue of leadership, brand and driving a coherent message in the financial services industry is becoming paramount as well as the distribution landscape post-crisis is changing dramatically: Bill Gross collected $85 billion in net flows in the last five years influencing markets publicly with themes like the “new normal” and in my roughly 75 conference calls with CIOs, CEOs and heads of distribution networks across Europe in the last few weeks while writing a book it became clear that, in addition to performance (good, not stellar), senior commitment, visibility, and other qualitative aspects are becoming the key driver of success.

Brand as the sum of experiences: The jury is out on how good and influential the iPad will be, but I for one will definitely trash my Kindle DX with gusto and verve (and leave my laptop at home when going on business trips). I commented on the highly frustrating device a few weeks back from the Cathay lounge in Hong Kong and since then have been using the iPhone Kindle app as a better alternative to the Kindle.

The only reason why I still look at the damn thing once a week is the New Yorker (create an app already, David Remnick).  Its funeral can’t come soon enough – yesterday it froze three times in five minutes while I was trying to highlight a few paragraphs in the FT and NYT. When I go to my clippings I have to painstakingly click through each page to get to the end (go to location seems just a placeholder in the menu) and it doesn’t cease to surprise me how the “whispernet” can’t connect to the server in the middle of Manhattan.

Lastly, a few weeks ago I dropped my Kindle (with protective sleeve) from a low chair and it died immediately. In comparison, when a friend of mine first showed me his iPhone (without protective sleeve) in a cafe a few years back a waitress  by accident flicked it all across the room onto a marble floor and into a wall. My friend was close to a heart attack, the device was fine.

Back-to-basics.

P.S. I just came home and had the iPad announcement in my inbox… and watched Steve Job’s iPad presentation. There is no doubt in my mind that it will, just like the iPhone in 2007 (250million sold in three years, along with 3 billion application downloads), revolutionize the industry. Watch for yourself: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1001q3f8hhr/event/index.html