20 years of Apple Marketing [1 of 2]

Abstract


The document seeks to briefly overview and considers the marketing strategy of Apple over the last 20 years.



Marketing Strategy over the Years

Marketing strategies & effects

Apple has established for itself a bit of mystique to a degree. They were the bad boys, legendary for “thinking outside of the box”. Some of this is useful spin based on expertise in a variety of areas, but not necessarily an expertise in business insofar as they were mistakes made early on (Computer Museum (symposium), 2006). With the exception of the introduction product manager Steve Schler (who was 32 at the time), all the principals were 29 and younger (at least as regards the Macintosh).

One of the key ironies for such a renegade, outside of the box group is the overarching strategy, as we look back, that one product line anytime takes the spotlight (in a very ordered, linear manner). We start out with the Macintosh, celebrate the iPod, see the iPhone is a breakthrough and now find ourselves with the iPad.

Each of these has shared some key expectations. Each of these products came to market as works of art in their own right. There is a unique, special elegance about Apple products. If you are lucky enough to have an Apple store in your metropolitan area, you know this firsthand, for walking in shares in large measure the same experience one has walking into a high-end salon, boutique or spa.

Each of these products purports ease-of-use on the one hand, with an equal or higher functionality. In the first decade of the score of years, the Macintosh and the iPod offerings were in playful, spectral flavors; essentially, whatever color best suited your lifestyle. In this last decade, playful went formal as the iPhone and iPad offerings were in sleek black and chrome.



Considerations of Successes, etc. - the “big” Mac

Reasons for success or failure

Mike Murray joined Apple in February of 1982 as the marketing director, with an eye toward ramping up for the release of the Macintosh (which occurred January 24, 1984). Standing on the shoulders of the Apple, and the Apple II, in 1983 there was 1 billion in sales, 50 million in R&D and another $50 million spent in advertising.

Steve Jobs (the founder of Apple) and Mike Murray confess some infatuation with George Lucas and from a marketing perspective took inspiration in the pre-merchandising of Star Wars. To this end was the issuance of a magazine, MacWorld, in advance of the Macintosh itself.

Guy Kawasaki, now famous in his own right, was in charge of getting software written for the Macintosh at that time. His key marketing contribution, although renegade at the time (although certainly reminiscent of the Tapscott and Williams’ Wikinomics movement (Tapscott & Williams, 2006)), was to send software to all the VARs (value added resellers) in the US.

Although now clocking beyond 200 taglines (the most notable current one being “there’s an app for that”, which seems viral, almost part of our cultural vernacular, yet beware of how highly disposable these become), the one most pushed for the Macintosh was “the computer for the rest of us”. However, coinciding with the tagline, “test drive the Macintosh.” The idea of Steve Epstein was that people would go to a computer store, actually take the computer home and see how it worked for them.

Yet another approach was born of an opportunity. Steve Jobs found himself at a party hosted by Andy Warhol and ran into Mick Jagger, and so spawned a pursuit to customize a “Mick Mac”. In turn, this led to a series of celebrity endorsements; the list of celebrities is in the 1985 annual report.

But perhaps the greatest push was the ability to stand upon the mystique associated with the iconic nature of the year itself, 1984. The ad agency Chiat Day, was able to do the unheard of at that time, engage in a well-known movie director, Sir Ridley Scott (of Alien, Thelma & Louise & Black Hawk Down) to create an ad for the Super Bowl (at the time this would have been seen as an inferior career move, and to step down). Airing the ad for the board of directors found the ad originally rebuffed. The ad was allowed to move forward only by way of a kind of default. However, it proved so successful that the same board gave an ovation shortly afterwards, and the ad began to air. (Chiat Day, 2011)

In 1985, as the Macintosh made its way into our cultural consciousness, Apple reorganized into three essential divisions; business, education and the consumer division. Whether intuitive or creatively led, the business division found directional emphasis with desktop publishing. This in turn led to an investment in graphics dominance, and the Macintosh has established itself as the computer of choice throughout the entire visual, applied and commercial arts. The education division sold “packages” by the dozens, at $10,000 per machine, in a prelaunch effort to a wide variety of colleges and universities. This created a wikinomic-like discovery cycle (which fed back to Apple, further informing future development).

These marketing strategies may have been pure buckshot early on, but they’ve been assimilated and honed since, affording Apple an ever stronger base from which to work from.