1997 was the year that Michael Dell gave the advice that Apple should close up shop and return the money to the shareholders.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Look at this guy. In shorts, discussing marketing for his company in a way which an average person can understand.<p>No bullshit. No paradigm shifting. No synergies. No Dilbert Speak.
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...
although, if you compare then and now - the adverts don't follow that narrative at all.<p>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.<p>it worked ok<p>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 like this one from when he was at NeXT. No so much about marketing, but more about product strategy:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9dmcRbuTMY" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9dmcRbuTMY</a><p>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.
I have seen that 'Crazy Ones' commercial* dozens of times, still gives me goosebumps. Such good work.<p>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?<p>*<a href="http://vimeo.com/7640346" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/7640346</a>
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.<p>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.
Who's the guy on the word "vilify" (just after Ali)?<p>Also, what's the "Got milk?" campaign? I've often heard references to it, but I don't think it aired over here.<p><i>EDIT</i> internet to the rescue: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLSsswr6z9Y" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLSsswr6z9Y</a>
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.<p>It feels deceitful, and the fact that it works so well disturbs me.