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Comment by ErikAugust | Hacker News Reader

"Since Tim Cook told Kara Swisher “Privacy is a human right; it’s a civil liberty,” the firm’s stock has tripled, adding $1.3 trillion in value."

To imply that has anything to do at all with Apple's stock value tripling is so dishonest.

I get that Scott Galloway has a desire to persuade you of something about brand strategy, but I feel bad that there are people out there that might believe that any sort fluffy privacy marketing has caused a tripling of market cap for Apple.

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I think you're being way too pedantic about Prof G's interpretation here. The larger point is Apple's obsession with customer wants/needs versus ALL of its competitors being very anti-privacy stances (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.).

In other words, the fact that they are all used in the same sentence (similar to Coke/Pepsi/7UP) and Apple has a very differentiated strategy to the rest of them for a horizontal component of all of its products, puts them in a stronger long term market value.

Apple knows that trust in tech only becomes more important the more the tech interfaces with the human body. Other companies who have no trust have no future there.

Alternatively, readers can improve their comprehension skills so that they can better recognize satire.

Not saying it should be attributed solely to that, but having a marketing message that your main competitor (Android) cannot repeat or rephrase with a serious face is one heck of an advantage to have. Just remember PC vs Mac ads and all those "we take better photos than _ phone" ads. I think their best try has been 'privacy shouldn't be expensive' in some opinion piece by Pichai but still weak.

PS. I have friends who have no idea how the internet works at all but they do have the intuition that Apple makes money from the hardware and not from exploiting their privacy as Google. That's their reason to sticking with iPhones.

This is my intepretation, but I didn't conclude that privacy marketing added $1.3trillion to Apples market cap, what I did take from that statement is that brand strategy IS very important though. I say this because Apples privacy marketing has definitely impacted me, I was already an Apple fanboy but I've become more resolute in not buying and persuading people to not buy non-apple hardware since their privacy marketing tear. So maybe it hasn't added trillions in value but it has indeed added something!

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