Marketing is about values, says Apple founder Steve Jobs in this behind-the-scenes video from 1997. People will not remember much about any company, he continues, which means that you as a business owner will have to decide carefully what you want them to know about yours.
According to Jobs, what people should know about a company are its core values—which shouldn’t change, he argues. All brands need investment and caring if they are going to retain their relevance and vitality, says Jobs, whose own brand, Apple, was among the most valuable brands in the world already in the 90s.
For Apple, the end of the 1990s were encapsulated in the words, “think different”. Their marketing campaign showed faces of famous men and women who had, in some way, gone against the conventions of their time. People like Mahatma Gandhi, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali. The message was: we already have the best computers in the world, now watch us change the world and you change it with us.
You may agree or disagree about Apple’s marketing message but we all know that it worked!
Now, six years after Job’s death, Apple is arguably struggling as it pits itself against the likes of Samsung, competing in technical prowess. Apple never was at the cutting edge technically. Their popularity was always based on their brand image and impressive design aesthetic.
Not that their computers weren’t great. But that was not the point, as Jobs also reiterates in this interesting snippet of computer and marketing history.
Watch: Steve Jobs “Think Different”