Steve Jobs on Apple's brand strategy in 1997 | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs on Apple's brand strategy in 1997

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110 pointsaditya40 comments

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.

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.

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.

Okay, so the shorts pulled you out of it too? Everytime the video panned out I was like "Whoa, where are his pants!?"... then back to being mesmerized. Amazing talk.

I have managed it.

Another talk I find highly inspirational is his 2005 Stanford university commencement address.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

Down boy, down.

I'd love to see a similar modern interview with him to compare and contrast... anyone know of one?

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...

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.

The challenges are different.

Most startups struggle to get awareness. A very abstract tag line (e.g. "Do it the fun way") doesn't really help with that problem. Your customers are different too -- a "mainstream" audience is more moved by what feels good than early adopters (who, generally speaking, are trying to satisfy a "pain point").

Apple in 1997 was very well known. They were competing with PCs in a technical way (e.g. faster computers), and it wasn't working very well. Their shift in marketing was to build a stronger Apple brand and make more of an emotional pitch. It turned out to be a more powerful differentiator and was longer-lasting than focusing on the benefits of a particular product.

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

I think a big part of this is that Apple's products are in brand new/relatively unknown categories, and people are totally unfamiliar with what the dang thing is. By the time the iMac came out, everyone knew what a computer was. You didn't need to explain it, you needed to sell it.

When the iPhone came out, no one except Treo nerds really knew what the fuck a smartphone was. So their iPhone ads were mostly focused on educating the public about what this crazy new thing can do. Same with the iPad.

If you look at the old iPod ads, you see them applying both strategies at different times. The very first iPod ad they did (http://youtu.be/nWqj6OQQOHA) showed you exactly how the thing worked, from hardware to software. It basically walked you through a use case. Later ads (http://youtu.be/NbYT7x2ZKmk) when everyone knew what an iPod was, were much more aspirational.

My money says that in a few years, the iPad ads will head in that direction too. But there's a lot of education they still have to do.

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.

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

"consume different"?

Apple's target market used to be creative professionals, but now they've expanded to the mainstream (and there simply aren't enough creative professionals to sustain their growth), so it has to change.

That said, the iPad touchscreen certainly has creative possibilities - it's a graphics input tablet that's also a display (both called tablets). I can imagine new ways of interacting - eg. cut-and-paste by holding both ends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_tablet#Apple_Computer

Just an aside: the only downvotes I remember getting on HN are on Apple submissions. I eventually worked out that even the mildest criticism of Apple products, no matter how carefully articulated and justified, and no matter how intellectually interesting the point, would get downvotes. I also found that praising Apple would always get upvotes.

So these days, I mostly don't comment on Apple stories. It's not worth it, if you want to have an interesting discussion.

I think there are a few factors that contribute to this apparent trend. There have been a string of products that users love- creating a vocal and emotional group of commenters. At the same time, there's a lot of well intended criticism by people who have a bias against Aaple for reasons other than quality of products- some of whom just want to support the underdogs which may be just as good but not as well known to the public. There will always be a non negligible sentiment against popular companies or products based solely on the fact that they're popular (I'm not saying this is a bad thing, as it sort of acts as a natural capitalistic force against monopolies).

However, it seems to me that objective criticism is just as well upvoted as objective praise. It's usually just the snarky comments (in either direction) that are downvoted.

Elegant devices, seamless integration, simplicity -- what Apple's ads are all about today -- are brand advertising. That is the brand's promise and differentiation wrapped up in one tidy package.

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.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A&feature=relat...

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

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

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

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.

perhaps due to weight loss?

or maybe it's a natural change from aging.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

In the ad, they are not selling you a product. They are telling you what they believe. It would only be deceitful if what they told you they believed didn't match up with their actions.

Many companies make promises that don't match up with their realities and in America, we're all a lot more skeptical of "marketing speak" for this very reason. However, when what you promise is congruent with what you deliver, it's a magical thing.

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