
Steve Jobs on Apple's brand strategy in 1997 - aditya
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmG9jzCHtSQ
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steveb
1997 was the year that Michael Dell gave the advice that Apple should close up
shop and return the money to the shareholders.

As a company and brand, Apple was in bad shape: Windows 95 was a huge success
and Windows NT was growing in the enterprise while NeXT had faltered.

Jobs really didn't have a lot in the product pipeline (the first iMac didn't
come out until a year later), so the campaign needed to make employees and
customers believe again in Apple.

Four years from this speech the iPod was released and OSX started to show up
on desktops. It took eight years before Apple went to Intel processors.

And it took ten years of incremental improvement, discipline, product focus,
and risk-taking before we got to the iPhone.

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solutionyogi
It's impossible to not become a Steve Jobs fanboy.

Look at this guy. In shorts, discussing marketing for his company in a way
which an average person can understand.

No bullshit. No paradigm shifting. No synergies. No Dilbert Speak.

~~~
_frog
This is part of why I think Steve Jobs is such a great spokesman for Apple as
a company. He believes every word coming out of his mouth and that enthusiasm
tends to be infectious.

Look at any presentations he's given, the iPad 2 launch comes to mind. After
each of the software demos he'd come back on stage with this look of wonder on
his face and it really affects the audience on a deep emotional level.

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nbashaw
I don't see many startups who display evidence of holding the belief that
"marketing is about values". There's a lot of focus on making something
useful, but not telling a story that will resonate with a human being's heart.
I wonder why this is...

~~~
melvinram
I suspect it's because the enviroment and consumers are different. People are
no longer okay with you saying you think different. They need you to prove it.
They need you to show it.

With Apple, a lot of their advertising focuses on what's different about them
but they tell that narrative in a way that conveys that they came to this
conclusion (aka the product being sold) by thinking about the problem in a way
that hadn't been thought about before. They are still narrative but they have
to make it believable in a different way.

A lot of others are doing the same but usually not doing as good a job on the
latter, but they still focus on proving what it is they value, by the
decisions they make in building the product.

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_tef
although, if you compare then and now - the adverts don't follow that
narrative at all.

it looks like apple started off by copying what nike were doing - aspirational
branding - attaching it to celebrities to hope it carries over to the brand.

it worked ok

now it seems like their core idea is more of 'we make elegant devices that
will change your world' - focusing much more on the design and the use of the
products, while still avoiding much of the technical specs and benchmarks

~~~
ecuzzillo
The point was that at that time the brand was in need of rejuvenation, as it
had been neglected.

Nowadays, I think everybody would agree that the brand is quite healthy, so
the problem is to remind people that there are new shiny things under this
shiny brand, which they should buy right now.

~~~
ugh
Apple simply didn’t have any shiny or great products in 1997. They were a
mess.

I think that one reason the first iMacs were so colorful – so unlike every
other later Apple product (except the smaller iPods) – is not that Jony Ive
had a completely different taste back then, I think they were so colorful to
make a big splash, to be visibly different, to save the company. Those were
computers you could show off in ads (while still not talking about specs and
speeds). Here is an ad from that era:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT4xftxMoMg>

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StudyAnimal
I like this one from when he was at NeXT. No so much about marketing, but more
about product strategy:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9dmcRbuTMY>

Of course he was wrong. The workstation market did not develop a professional
workstation segment, Macs and PCs just got powerful enough to make
workstations irrelevant.

~~~
_frog
Not as relevant but I saw this video a while back:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A&feature=related)

It's interesting to see a young Steve Jobs perfecting his presentation style.

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scdc
I have seen that 'Crazy Ones' commercial* dozens of times, still gives me
goosebumps. Such good work.

How much of this quality is Chiat/Day and/or the specific team at Chiat Day?
Or is it mostly Jobs' vision for the ad that the agency just executes?

*<http://vimeo.com/7640346>

~~~
solutionyogi
The Crazy Ones commercial is my all time favorite commercial. Unbelievably
well done.

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bvi
On an unrelated note - has Jobs' _voice_ itself changed at some point? It
seems a lot more...high pitched and "airy" now than it was back then.

~~~
scdc
perhaps due to weight loss?

~~~
slantyyz
or maybe it's a natural change from aging.

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nathanlrivera
There is no denying Steve Jobs is a brilliant leader who can inspire people.

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endlessvoid94
If you didn't know who this commercial was about before seeing it, you
wouldn't know until the very end. The Apple logo is only on screen for maybe 1
second, and yet it still plants the company firmly in your memory.

It's great.

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calbear81
As a marketer, seeing this reminds me to stay grounded and ignore the hype and
focus on the most important thing: conveying to the world who we are and what
we stand for.

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annon
It's crazy to watch these videos and know that it was only 14 years ago. Apple
has grown so much in a small amount of time, and steve has aged a lot getting
them there.

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richcollins
Interesting that the other examples he used were about differentiating through
branding rather than the product. Apple succeeds because its product is better
than the competition. I doubt many people use Apple products because they
identify with the catchphrase about "changing the world for the better". They
use apple products because they can do what they want to do better.

~~~
keiferski
That may be true, but I think his point about "not focusing on the technical
aspects of why Apple was better" is _really_ important.

~~~
richcollins
Right, you have to communicate the reasons that your product is better in a
way that potential customers will understand. Although if you truly do
something way better, your customer's will do that for you.

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sthatipamala
Sadly, Apple has transitioned from honoring the developers who "Think
Different" and build up the Apple platform, to nickel-and-diming them

~~~
celoyd
Apple has never treated third-party developers well in that sense. (There are
exceptions, but they are exceptions.)

Apple’s strategy has always been to first bring in customers who are willing
to pay for high quality, and then let developers fend for themselves in that
environment. This was true at the time of these ads and it’s true now.

If you’re a developer, Apple isn’t going to say nice things about you, or make
it particularly easy to get your app in the App Store, or give you everything
for free. It’s going to give you access to a good platform with good users.
Some developers seem to think this is insulting and others seem relieved.

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6ren
Who's the guy on the word "vilify" (just after Ali)?

Also, what's the "Got milk?" campaign? I've often heard references to it, but
I don't think it aired over here.

 _EDIT_ internet to the rescue: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLSsswr6z9Y>

~~~
cydonian_monk
The vilified "crazy one" is Ted Turner. He was used in one of the "Think
Different" print ads as well.

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reso
Honestly, I don't have much respect for "Lifestyle" advertising. Just because
you can use pictures of Einstein, Ghandi, Earhart, and Russel on the screen
before your logo, doesn't mean you know shit about making a product.

It feels deceitful, and the fact that it works so well disturbs me.

~~~
solutionyogi
Talk about missing the point.

For Apple, 'Think Different' is not about marketing or PR speak. It's their
way of life. They actually believe in it. Their products, iPod/iPhone/iPad, is
a living proof of their philosophy. Apple with their products have literally
reinvented the category. iPhone and iPad both have completed redefined
smartphone and table category respectively.

The beauty is that their 'Think Different' Ad is also very different from the
usual ads you see.

