"It’s
a complicated and noisy world," mused a younger Steve Jobs, "and
we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. "
That chance to make a memory, he says, is the essence of brand
marketing.
For Jobs, who looks so Jobsian—and so 1997—in his sandals, shorts,
and turtleneck, that chance to make a memory presents the fundamental question
of branding. The oft-mythologized executive
laments that Apple's brand had fallen off, and the way to get back was not by
talking about speeds or megahertz or why Apple is better than Windows.
A brand is not so much about rational arguments, Jobs argues, but the way that the
company resonates with people emotionally.
Like Marc Ecko, Jobs uses Nike as a case study:
Nike sells a commodity,
they sell shoes. And yet when you think of Nike you feel something different
than a shoe company. In their ads, as you know, they don't ever talk about the
product, they don't ever talk about their air soles, how they're better than
Reebok's air soles. What's Nike do in their advertising? They honor great
athletes and they honor great athletics. That is what they are about.
Branding answers the question of what are we here to do?,
he says. And so, somewhat similar to Nike, Apple rediscovered that they were
all about accessible aspiration. Jobs continues on, fitting self-knowledge to
marketing know-how:
Our customers want to know,
"Who is Apple and what is it that we stand for? Where do we fit in this
world?" What we're about isn't making boxes for people to get their jobs
done, though we do that well. We do that better than almost anybody in some
cases. But Apple's about something more than that: Apple, at the core, its core
value, is we believe that people with passion can change the world for the
better. That's what we believe.
Having done that existential legwork, Jobs enthused that it was
time to bring that message to the people with a marketing strategy. And while
the market's changed, the company has changed, their products and distribution
and all the other details have changed, the core values stay steadfast.
"The things Apple believes in at its core are the same things
that Apple really stands for today," he says. "And so we wanted to
find a way to communicate this."
That communication would turn into advertising history:
The Think Different ad, Jobs says, features living and dead heroes who were
crazy enough to think they could change the world, who, as we know by now,
decided to think different.
"The ones who aren't (alive), you know, if they ever would
have used a computer, it would have been a Mac," he says.
Source:
FastCompany.com
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