How to Sell a Duck to Apple
The remarkable misadventures of Edwin The Duck
Years ago, I worked with a children’s toy startup that got the ultimate invitation:
Pitch Apple for a spot in 250 stores.
There was just one problem:
Nobody could explain what the toy actually was.
Edwin the Duck was adorable—but confusing. A waterproof Bluetooth speaker… that glowed… and took temperatures… and paired with an app full of games, songs, and stories… and responded to motion like a Wii remote…?
The gut reaction: “Cute duck. I don’t get it.”
The pitch took ten minutes to make sense—far too long for the shelf, and definitely too long for Apple.
That’s when they invited me into the conversation.
The first thing I did was stop the feature dump.
No more listing the bells and whistles.
Instead, we reframed the pitch around relevance.
We asked three deceptively simple questions:
What is it?
Who does it help?
How does it help them?
And that’s when it clicked.
Yes, Edwin was for babies and toddlers—but it helped moms. Busy ones. The kind juggling bedtime, bath time, and screen time with 19 other things.
Edwin soothed babies and educated toddlers—so moms could reclaim a little sanity.
That clarity changed everything.
“Edwin is an app-connected smart toy that helps busy moms soothe their babies and educate their toddlers through his world of songs, games, and stories.”
That one sentence rewrote the packaging, repositioned the product and reintroduced Edwin to the market.
A few months later, he was on shelves at Apple. Then Target. Then Best Buy. Edwin even made it to the TechCrunch stage—where I filled in for the founder (long story).
But here’s what matters:
The product didn’t change. The story did.
And that story finally helped people understand what made Edwin so special—without a 10-minute explanation.
So now I’ll ask you: What’s your Edwin?
What have you built that’s brilliant, but misunderstood?
If your pitch still needs ten minutes, your brand still has work to do.
Got something brilliant—but difficult to explain?
Discover how to strip away the noise—and reveal what really matters.