Transcript:
It’s easy to forget just how much trouble Apple were in back in 1997 the company had just lost a hundred million dollars which was a huge amount for an organization that now had a market capitalization of only two billion dollars when Michael Dell was famously asked how he would fix Apple back there and he said I would basically shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders so there was tremendous anticipation when Steve Jobs returned in 1997 to take over the helm of the company for the second time and you can imagine that anticipation in Boston Massachusetts August of that year when he addressed a packed room to talk about what he felt was Apple’s future direction if you asked you know what are the five greatest brands in the world if you asked you went out you asked professionals this question you know I think Nike would be on everybody’s list coca-cola would be on everybody’s list Disney would be on everybody’s list and Apple would be on everybody’s list we have one of the world’s greatest brands and we haven’t paid much attention to it in the last several years and I think you’re gonna see that start to change Steve Jobs recognized not only that Apple’s greatest asset was its brand but also that without a clear positioning that brand would start to move and deviate and become contradictory one of his first big strategic gifts to his company when he returned was to clearly define what is the positioning of Apple and it came down to three core tenets Apple was simplicity creativity and humanity and he took those three core tenets and used them to briefly clout and the agency shy a day which he brought back into the company as well and when he asked them to create a new ad campaign to celebrate what made Apple different and of course shy a day came out with again one of the great campaigns of the late late 20th century the think different campaign here’s to the crazy ones The Misfits the rebels the troublemakers the round pegs in the square holes ones who see things different they’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo you can quote them disagree with them glorify or vilify them about the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things they push the human race forward and while some may see them as the crazy ones we see genius because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do [Music] what a powerful ad but it’s also some other things it’s a simple message it’s fundamentally about creative people and it celebrates at its core humanity bang on the brand positioning and of course it transfers very well to print advertising and to occasional outdoor ads as well that campaign got Apple out of trouble by 2003 the company now had a valuation of around 8 billion dollars and thanks to the launch of iPod a year or two earlier it was now beginning to genuinely grow both sales and profit but it wanted to increase the penetration of the iPod globally so it turned again to shiet day and asked for another campaign and that’s when we got the again iconic campaign silhouettes it began with a wonderful outdoor campaign which then moves seamlessly into these still I think incredibly beautiful and powerful print ads which certify and show the product in action but of course are also clearly redolent of three values this is a simple campaign it’s beautiful and creative but also fundamentally it’s about the use of the human not the actual device again bang on the brand position by now 2006 Apple was growing its market capitalization was 70 billion dollars and it turns its attention for the first concerted time back to its core category of computing a category that had been dominated by Microsoft in the software area for the last decade and suddenly Apple decided it was going to fight back and once again it was the time to create a new campaign the funny the effective the powerful and the very own brand campaign get a Mac hello um hello I’m a PC and I’m livin with Vista I’m so proud of you for doing this peril this is great thank you one day at a time buddy yeah you’ve taken the biggest step and that’s accepting that our operating system isn’t working like it should I just wish they would resolve these problems and issues once and for all I wish I could tell you it’s gonna be easy well I’m pleased to say I’ve been error-free for nearly a week way to go well I’m pleased to say I’ve been error-free for nearly a week okay well I’m pleased to say I’ve been error-free for so hard to watch someone restart him blind please to say I’ve been error-free for nearly a week the Gila Mac campaign was a wild success in North America but those same characters were also exported to places like Japan and also to the UK to tell the same on-brand story and if you look at them now you can see what’s going on there are two very different ways to position a brand the first way is to say to the customer I stand for this the second way is to pick an enemy who doesn’t have those characteristics and say I stand against them and by the way both of these methods are not mutually exclusive we can do above at the same time and you see it very clearly in the get a Mac campaign the Apple character actually doesn’t do a lot because he can stand back and let the Microsoft character be complex be a follower be machine-like and in contrast the Apple character appears simple creative and human it’s a brilliant example of what we call taking an enemy and positioning against them for the benefit of the brand in the customers mind and now we know the results Apple has joined a very exclusive club one of the few organizations to have achieved a trillion-dollar market capitalization and as testimony to the power of Steve Jobs vision and his ability to manage that brand almost a third of that trillion dollar valuation is attributable to the financial brand equity to the value of the Apple brand truly it became Apple’s greatest asset and truly it has been the source of this amazing two decades of success no surprise as well that of all the organizations that have won EFI’s Apple as it has essentially been rewarded more than almost all of them particularly over these last two decades of success but Apple teaches as I think as well some very important lessons on positioning first positioning isn’t a complicated concept it isn’t a book it isn’t a seven slide presentation triangles and keyholes fundamentally positioning is the intention it’s the intended brand image it’s what I want you to think about when you about my brand in the case of Apple I want you to think that Apple is fundamentally human that it’s simple and that it’s creative so that’s my position positioning also is it the same as slogans or strap lines but it can be a great source of them looking back over history strap lines like think different take all of these three positioning boxes say hello to iPad simple creative and human it’s the source of this power of the slogan I think Apple also teaches as a differentiation is possible back in the 60s Rosser Reeves taught us that you could have a unique selling proposition something that no one else could have we watered it down a little bit in the 70s with recent drought talking about positioning it wasn’t unique anymore but you could own it more than anyone else jump forward to today and many of the great marketing thinkers are saying maybe differentiation isn’t even possible the great Byron sharp questions whether it’s even achievable for a brand I believe that Apple demonstrates that it is possible I don’t think you can own anything I don’t think these things are unique but in the permutation of the different words you choose the combination of them together and then the concerted execution differentiation can be achieved and look at what it’s worth in 2017 Apple took a 15% share of unit sales of smartphones globally but they took an incredible 79 percent of the total profit pool because fundamentally differentiation lowers price sensitivity and allows greater profitability as a result it also shows us that the optimum way to position a brand is simplicity three words Beach 30 words every time and we learned from Apple that ultimately positioning is not the words themselves but it’s the constant maniacal execution of them in everything you do and finally I think this is not just a story of Apple it’s also the story of Shire day and the combination of these two organizations working together in a truly successful agency marriage there is no greater positioning case study in the history of marketing than Apple truly Apple is a brand that was about creativity plis city and ultimately humanity visit the EFI’s website for a database of all their amazing case studies and come to marketing week for more videos in this series and information on the mini MBA in Marketing
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