Apple – The Greatest Marketing Team in all of history
As promised, this post will have no YouTube video, for better or for worse. Today I will be talking about Apple Inc., a company that I’m sure all of you have heard about, the inventor and manufacturer of the popular iPod and MacBook products.
We all know the story: Apple was a struggling corporation, a computer company that had existed since nearly the very beginning, but appeared to have entirely lost the battle against Microsoft. This all changed, however, when Steve Jobs, one of Apple’s founders, returned to the company after a 13 year hiatus, and led it back to being a major player in the computer industry.
But how exactly did he do it? How did Steve Jobs manage to take a raft that was barely struggling to stay afloat in the stormy sea that is the electronics sector and turn it into the grandest, proudest, and most stylish vessel around? The simple answer is that he is inhuman, a miracle worker. The long answer is actually shorter than the short answer: marketing.
Sure, the invention of the iPod, the MacBook, and subsequently the iPhone, and most recently the iPad are what brought Apple back to respectability. But marketing is the reason why these products succeeded in the first place. Technologically, an iPod has the same capabilities as any other standard mp3 player, and a MacBook is no faster than a Windows laptop computer. Yet these Apple products manage to sell for twice or even three times as much as their non-Apple counterparts, thanks to Apple’s unmatched marketing department.
Apple’s design team has somehow managed to make the company’s products appear appealing to all consumers. Ask somebody about their opinion of how the iPod looks and you will probably receive a response along the lines of either “hi-tech,” “cool,” or “stylish.” Remarkably, Apple’s products are designed in a way that they appeal to people of both genders, and all ages. Further reinforcing this perception of their products is their advertisements that will imply the notion that their products are not only visually appealing, but also technologically groundbreaking, flat out superior to those of their competitors. Not using an Apple product would be just plain dumb.
After Apple manages to “convert” this first wave of customers, their success then becomes amplified due to the “mob mentality” of other consumers. Upon seeing other people with iProducts, people often purchase some themselves in an attempt to join the group, to be en vogue, “hip.”
In my next blog post, I will further explore Apple’s unduplicated marketing success, as well as examine exactly how Apple manages to sell their products to the public.