Like us, Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs always wants to get the attention of certain consumers in the world. Unlike some of us, he realized – back in 1997 – that to get the right folks to pay attention, there was something much more important than talking about how great his product was.
He knew great advertising and marketing would not feature the product or tell why it’s better than the others.
Instead, marketing had to be about something else.
This is perhaps the finest five minute marketing lesson I have ever seen.
Circa 1997
Today, 13 years later, the Apple brand has itself come to mean ‘think different’. They don’t need to link to Einstein and Picasso anymore. It’s who they’ve become now, whether you like them or not.
And they did it by living and creating their products based on their own core values. Their advertising vividly expressed those values – who they honored, who they thought they were themselves.
What about you? Who do YOU honor? What greatness in some part of life do you admire and want to be like? And how can you show that, through what you market and how you choose to market it? E.g., Nike honored great athletes and great athletics, and they strove to BE that through their shoes.
Go ahead. Your turn.
(Thanks, Jason.)
A great introduction to a great ad. But the thing I liked best about it was his repeated references to "the core" and Apple's "core values" without ever apologizing for a great pun —
Apple has a core 🙂
Thanks, Kim, for a poignant reminder that we will do better as marketers when we link our products to the causes and emotions that move people, rather than argue that we have a better "this" or "that" than our competitors.
I can see why Steve Jobs is so revered among the Apple tribe. He is a leader, a visionary.
Great video, thanks for sharing it, Kim – I resonate with it so much – True leaders really do honor people. Diana
Great video. Think differently. Believe you can change the world and you can. Go for it. Whatever you believe in your heart of hearts, go for it. You will right yourself up.
Thanks.
Thanks, Kim, great video!
Yep, I agree, if you believe in your core values and let your passion drive you, you can indeed change the world.
Ilka
Yes, yes and yes!
And, besides, you gotta love those knees!! ;^D
Interesting video;
You have to be impressed that someone dedicated to making appliances with computers embedded in them could communicate such a noble purpose, for an essentially commercial transaction.
Thanks again for this video.
Thanks Kim this video encourages me to try harder to succeed.
Hi Kim,
Visionaries are great leaders. They do change the world, but sadly not always for the better. Like Steve said it is complicated. Advertising your mission has grown to be more critical than your bells and whistles. Do you think that is because the Xers and Gen Y are motivated differently than the boomers?
Wishing You Plenty To Live,
Tom Doiron
Atlanta
Hi Paul –
You wrote: "we will do better as marketers when we link our products to the causes and emotions that move people, rather than argue that we have a better "this" or "that" than our competitors."
Do you think linking them to emotions and causes is enough? Yes, maybe for that first purchase. But to build a fan base as large and rabid as Apple has over the last 20 years, you need to make your customers thrilled with each product you come out with, so that they love your stuff and you so much that they are happy to forgive the occasional boo boo and keep buying from you.
Creating the super great stuff seems to have come from, in Jobs' case, imagining he IS one of those crazy people who is passionate about changing the world for the better. And he does, for a very significant portion of the population. I am one. The people who work there are almost all driven by the belief they can change the world for the better.
So they become better, do better work, stay longer, and eventually they do change the world for the good for a significant part of the population.
Think?
It's an attitude that dictates your way of doing your calling, you know?
Michael Webster – you wrote:
"You have to be impressed that someone dedicated to making appliances with computers embedded in them could communicate such a noble purpose, for an essentially commercial transaction."
Every human being has to do something. Some people believe everyone has a calling. Those that know what it is, if they believe it's their calling, will give their lives over to it – like Mother Teresa, Gandhi, or Steve Jobs.
Perhaps it's not about whether it's commercial or not. There is satisfaction in doing one's calling to the absolute maximum of one's ability. The doing of it and maxing yourself out with it, is the satisfaction of it.
It's a different feeling than deciding what to do based on what other people think you should do, or letting others decide when you have done a good job or not, or copying what someone else has made or done, so common today in business.
This kind of passion, inspired by honoring the kinds of people you want to be, brings out your own best. And draws like minded people to you.
Yes, it is more risky, since you're betting the farm each time. But you expect to have to overcome obstacles that others will not want to bother to overcome. They'll settle for 'good enough' and you don't.
Jobs had this belief when he had nothing, before they sold one Mac, and when he had next to nothing again, after he got publicly canned by Apple's board, and then was rehired at $1/year, to revive Apple from the dead.
If you believe you can be like someone or a group of people you admire and honor, it seems as if you can rise to the occasion and become better than you otherwise would have been. Whether it's a commercial venture – Jobs – or not – Gandhi, Mother Teresa.
This attitude Jobs expresses here is about how he inspired himself to be greater than he otherwise might have been, and to draw people to him who were of like mind.
Doesn't matter if there is a commercial payoff or not. That part depends on the individual who's living out their calling, to the best of their ability.
Think?
I have always admired "Apple." The
commercial is not only touching but encouraging to those of us who have not made it yet.
Dureen Coade
http://www.vitalitymouse.com