Steve Jobs on The Secrets of Branding

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Steve Jobs on The Secrets of Branding

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Transcript:

Steve Jobs is well-known for his design aesthetics and ability to create innovative products but he is also unparalleled in marketing and branding and we’re going to look at a few of the things he had to say about branding in particular marketing is about values and what Steve meant by this is the world is noisy and we have to communicate through this noise and stand out so a lot of you may be familiar with you need to differentiate yourself but if you dig a little deeper into that there’s a core component of your company that you are trying to express to the world this core component is being delivered by vehicles and these are the little messages that go out to the world and tells the world what you’re about so the values this core is your brand so this is that intangible thing that we’re trying to express to the world in some way that they’ll understand and they’ll resonate with us and that goes back to as well defining your target market because you have to resonate with a group not with everyone you’re not going to resonate with everyone you’ve got to resonate with the particular group so you need to have a core in the first place need to think about what it what it is that makes your company what it is what is the what are the values if you had to think alright what does my company stand for what is the strong message of my company if I had one sentence to describe my company what would that one sentence be so someone walked up to you and said what what does your company really stand for what would you tell them think about that and then try to come up with the sentence that fits it and then try to refine it replace words and get it right and this is this is not something that you finish in just one sitting this goes on for years the message gets refined through the years message may change some times change the message will change it it won’t necessarily remain static because it’s going to it’s going to move with the times and keep resonating with that core group of people and as they change and as the times change your message tracks along with them your brand tracks along with them and it changes and Steve also said we have to be really clear on what we want them to know so this is a part about getting your message right your brand is the core inside the company that’s the value are the values of what the company stands for but no one’s going to understand that but you the person that created the company and the person that understands those values so the quarter needs a way the brand needs a way to express itself that’s where this message comes in this message is a delivery vehicle for the brand to get out to the customers so for it to get out through all this noise and reach the customers it’s got to be strong it’s got to be magnetic to that group so the more you understand that group the more they’re going to be attracted to that message the more a pathway is going to form between you your company and your core group of customers that pathway or that channel is what the message travels on and the message delivers what the brand is about it is that expression Steve also said that Nike and this was this was their our talk in the 90s and he mentioned that Nike was one of the greatest marketing companies in the universe well why would that be with Nike because they don’t talk about their product or compare themselves to a competitor such as a relock so you might be familiar with features versus benefits you don’t want to like a car for example you don’t want to talk about the knobs on the radio and how nice they are you want to talk about the sound of the radio and what you’re going to feel as you’re listening so you’re not talking about features you’re transitioning into benefits this is how your life’s going to improve this is how you’re going to feel you’re getting that emotional connection and then the part about not comparing Nike not comparing themselves to Reebok is that we’re not even worried about our competitors we’re not we’re not going to compare ourselves to them because we’re in a league of our own is basically what that means and Steve also said they not for Nike they honor great athletes and they honor great athletics so this was Nike Nike Nike had famous athletes in its commercials and it was always about representing athletics that’s where it stayed that’s the group it resonated with and it became very powerful in its commercials and he also said that’s who they are that’s what they are about so Nike made it very clear we’ve got this core value of athletics our message is going to be about great athletes great athletes people athletes that our group of customers are familiar with so we’re bridging a gap there by using these great athletes that they are already familiar with that they look up to we’re pairing ourselves with those great athletes so that helps Nike tremendously and building a very strong brand because that message becomes very powerful so Apple did the same thing with their thing different commercials they attached themselves to people that their core group of customers would be familiar with and that had that made Apple parallel to these famous people and made their message strong and built their brand made it stronger and Apple just kept doing that they kept finding all the different famous people that their group of customers would identify with and they ran with it lately and created one of the most successful ad campaigns in history so here’s the big question that Steve posed our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for where do we fit in this world and I think this is a great question for any company that’s looking to build a strong brand that they should ask themselves so it’s certainly a bigger picture of you about where your company fits in the universe and you’ve probably heard the expression how are you going to make a dent in the universe and when you start thinking along those lines it becomes a little easier to build that strong brand because you’re extremely aware it shouldn’t causing it about you’ve got these core values in your company now you know I need to get that out just sitting there by itself isn’t going to do anything I need to find ways to allow it to express itself but to express itself in such a way that it’s going to resonate with my core group and then it’s going to be something my core group can rally around because it’s this there’s an there’s another bigger part that I’m involving the brand with the brand’s got a bigger agenda that my core group is also going to resonate with now getting into something a little more practical about the aspects of brand and in particular consistency I’m going to stick with Apple here I’m talking about their logo so this is the initial logo that Apple had and the design is a design agency actually put this logo together one person in particular did this and the if you’re curious the reason why the colors are there is because the personal computer in 77 that Apple had developed the Apple 2 was actually not monochrome it was in color and the colors on the Apple meant to represent that and then the byte in the Apple was just to make it a little different so that it’s not just an apple but it’s there’s there’s a nice accent to it and as well the designer mentioned he wanted it not to be mistaken for a cherry wanted to look like an apple so it gave it this scale so that’s that’s just a little trivia on that now in regards to consistency this is the original Apple and then through the years more apples came about but you can still clearly see this is the same Apple with a different colors different accents but the brand is still there and again if we think about logo logo is the tangible expression of the brand or the company it’s putting a face on the company and if you think of a company as a person so people obviously have faces and they have personalities a company does it have that is built from scratch and you have to do all this so the face is the logo the personality is the brand and going back to this logo here for Apple the reason why it changes like this is because through the years times change when we talked about that earlier so as times change your brand kind of needs to change with the times and stay modern so that’s what happened with these logos you don’t really see this one anymore you see these so that they are continuing to resonate with the core group as a core group changes with time so I hope that helps a little bit and provide some interesting insight into what Steve Jobs had to say about marketing and gives you a little bit more ideas about how consistency works with branding thank you thank you for watching and for more great business tips like this please visit bite size vegan

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Posted by Ian

Ian has marketed for some of the world's best-known brands like Hewlett-Packard, Ryder, Force Factor, and CIT Bank. His content has been downloaded 50,000+ times and viewed by over 90% of the Fortune 500. His marketing has been featured in Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Adweek, Business Insider, Seeking Alpha, Tech Crunch, Y Combinator, and Lifehacker. With over 10 startups under his belt, Ian's been described as a serial entrepreneur— a badge he wears with pride. Ian's a published author and musician and when he's not obsessively testing the next marketing idea, he can be found hanging out with family and friends north of Boston.

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