How Steve Jobs and Apple Changed Advertising Forever

Over the past two weeks the media has gone CRAZY over Steve Jobs and the legacy he left behind. I’m subscribed to Times and Businessweek, and both magazines did special editions where the whole magazine was dedicated to Jobs, as did many other magazines. I’m not trying to hop on the bandwagon really, but I want to talk about another side of Steve Jobs, that is, Steve Jobs the Marketer.

I believe that Steve Jobs and Apple changed the way companies approach advertising, PR and marketing in general. I think Apple almost revolutionized the advertising industry with the way they marketed the company and advertised their products. As with almost everything at Apple, Jobs had both hands on the advertising wheel at Apple, and he had to personally approve almost every type of ad that had Apple’s name on it.

From a young age, I can remember watching Apple commercials on TV and seeing print ads in magazines and loving them. Now that I’ve almost completed my marketing degree, I can see why. Jobs has always done advertising the right way. Every commercial they make, every print ad that is created, is done the Apple way.

So how has Apple changed advertising? Well let’s start from the beginning.

In 1984, Apple wanted to create a buzz around its newest product, the Macintosh. Apple produced what is now hailed as one the best commercials of all time, and began their mission to create the best advertising in the industry. The TV commercial was directed by Ridley Scott and created by Lee Clow, then a creative at Chiat/Day advertising agency. The commercial was hugely expensive to make and featured a female heroine defying conformity, underlying Apple’s attack on the status quo and positioning itself as a somewhat of a cult brand.

The commercial was not only critically acclaimed across the advertising industry, but it also started the trend of having super expensive TV ads aired during the Superbowl, a tradition that continues to get more popular, and competitive today.

After the “1984” commercial, however, Steve Jobs was fired along with Lee Clow and the Chiat/Day agency. Apple stumbled into darkness without Jobs and the brand image was hurt badly. Then in 1997, over ten years after he had been fired, Jobs came back to Apple and began to reshape the company. One of his main visions was to completely revitalize Apple’s image, and he began by rehiring Lee Clow and Chiat/Day.

He had a new vision for Apple, which materialized into the “Think Different” campaign. This campaign did not focus on any products, but instead began a trend of “lifestyle” advertising that continues to be very popular today. The commercials didn’t ever show any Apple product, but instead instilled a message, with the only mention of Apple being the logo at the end of the commercial. The print side of the campaign was also unique. Instead of computing and tech magazines, Apple bought space in fashion and pop culture mags. Chiat/Day also started another trend of using billboards and outdoor advertising for the campaign, which according to lowendmac.com, was practically unheard of for a computer company at that time. The campaign won several ad awards and single-handedly revived Apple’s image and reestablished Apple as a counter-culture brand.

Jobs’ friendship with Lee Clow continued, and the Chiat/Day agency soon became part of the larger TBWA ad agency. Lee Clow worked on pretty much every advertising campaign that Apple did, which is very rare for a big company like Apple. Most companies jump around from one agency to the next, choosing whoever they think will be best for that particular campaign or product. Lee Clow and TBWA have been Apple’s only ad agency for the better part of 30 years, not counting the years when Job’s left Apple.

Jobs felt so strongly about proper marketing and advertising for Apple that he and Clow went one-step further. In 2006, Jobs and Clow created Media Arts Lab, a subsidiary of TBWA that worked for ONE client only: Apple. In this sense, Apple had an EXCLUSIVE agency that worked just for them, headed by a Clow and Jobs. This was also a first for the industry, but Jobs wanted something the typical agency couldn’t offer: strategy, planning, creative, digital, media, production, and most importantly confidentiality, all under one roof (Evening London Standard).

Steve Jobs and Lee Clow, 1984

“Two characteristics made handling Apple’s advertising utterly different from any other account: an obsession with secrecy and an absolute autocracy. Steve and Lee would meet weekly for several hours to agree direction. Apple marketing was a tight, incredibly centrally run team with ideas being agreed in Cupertino [Apple HQ in California] and then being disseminated across the world via the TBWA network.” Said Andrew McGuinness, head of TBWA from 2002-2005. “Steve had the same relentless focus on detail on communications as he did on his products. Every letter, every TV ad, every poster that ran anywhere in the world would be OK’d personally by Steve. He truly was the Brand Manager of Apple.”

Having an exclusive agency at Jobs disposal allowed Apple to create some of the most memorable ads and campaigns of any tech company, ever. After Think Different, Apple went away from lifestyle advertising to focus on their products. But unlike other companies, Apple didn’t focus on how fast the processors were, how much RAM they came with, how big the hard drivers were, or specs at all for that matter. Apple focused on how their products could change your life. They focused on what products could do for the consumer, how they could use them and what they had to offer. This was brilliant.

According to AdAge, Apple has become one of the top 100 US advertisers by spending $420 million on advertising last year. Almost $200 million of that went to network TV, and $33 million went to bilboards. Only $24 million went to internet media, and unlike other brands who spend money on budget banner ads and online advertisements, most of this went to high-end home page take-overs on sites like the NY Times, WSJ and USA Today.

Almost every advertising campaign Apple did was done simply, effectively and beautifully, thanks to Steve Jobs. Says Kayak.com CMO Robert Birge, “Who could possibly compare as a marketer?” “He taught ad people that design is king,” says Venables Bell & Partners creative director Paul Venables. Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s John Hegarty explained Jobs’ approach to advertising as, “the task of advertising was to not get in the way of his brilliant innovations, but to simply shine a light on them. So many brands could learn from this example.” More quotes here.

Here are some more of Apple’s most memorable advertisements:

Feel free to leave any questions or comments below!

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Jeff Bezos and The Future of Amazon

Steve Jobs. Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg. These names have a certain ring to them accompanied by visions of piles of cash, iPhones, Windows operating systems and Facebook accounts. Jeff Bezos doesn’t quite have that same ring to it. But it will. After watching Bezos’ recent Keynote presentation, I’m convinced that Bezos could well be the next Steve Jobs.

I’ve watched almost every Steve Jobs WWDC Keynote for the past few years, and I love his presentation style almost as much as the products he unveils. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, doesn’t quite have the magical presentation style that Jobs does, but he did one hell of a job unveiling the new Kindle devices and spelling out the future of Amazon on Wednesday.

For those of you now too familiar with the genus entrepreneur behind Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos grew up in Texas and graduated from Princeton. He moved to New York after graduation and got several different jobs in finance, eventually becoming VP at a successful firm specializing in the application of computer science to the stock market. By this time, the mid 90’s, the Internet wasn’t used to for e-commerce, but Bezos had an idea. According to his biography on the Academy of Achievement website, Bezos saw that Internet usage was increasing by 2,300% a year, and he knew there were new opportunities that he could capitalize on.

He looked at the top 20 mail order businesses of the day to see if any of them would be more efficient using the Internet. He realized that books were a commodity that could be sold on the Internet, because there were too many of them to ever put in one catalog. A huge database of books could be put on the Internet and reach a limitless audience, a perfect opportunity for Bezos. He immediately flew to LA for a bookseller’s convention and proceeded to learn everything he could about the industry. He came up with the idea of Amazon.com, but his employers weren’t prepared to help him. So he decided to quit his job and move to Seattle to start the website by himself.

Amazon was started in Bezos’ garage in Seattle in 1994. He initially told 300 of his friends about the company and asked them to spread the word. Within a month, with no press, Amazon.com had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries. Within three months, it had sales of $20,000 a WEEK. Bezos and his team continued improving the site, introducing such unheard-of features as one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification. Then they started selling more than just books. Now, Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer, with revenue of over $34 billion in 2010 and over 30,000 employees. Not to mention Bezos is worth $19.1 billion.

But Bezos didn’t stop there. Fast-forward a few years and Amazon is now MUCH more than just a website. Amazon offers more products and services than you know. They got into cloud computing early, and they are now competing in the cloud industry with the likes of Microsoft, Google and HP… and winning. They launched the Kindle book reader a few years ago and changed the landscape of book reading forever. Kindle has gotten phenomenal reviews, and according to ITB, Amazon has sold over 17 million of the devices, and they now sell more e-books than print books.

Fast-forward again to last Thursday and Amazon is expanding even more. Bezos announced the new Kindle Fire.

 

Kindle Fire is an iPad-like device that lets you download books, movies, music and apps instantly. It also stores ALL of your media on Amazon’s cloud for FREE. This means you can delete any content off the Kindle, such as a book you are done reading, and then instantly re-download it if you want to read it again, because everything’s stored on Amazon’s cloud. This also means that all your content auto-syncs with all your devices, such as your PC and phone, wirelessly and instantly. And… it’s only $199. The Kindle Fire will allow users to experience all of Amazon’s services, just like Apple has done. This includes Amazon Web Services (cloud), Amazon Prime (subscription service), Amazon Instant Video, Amazon MP3 Store, the Amazon App Store, as well as Amazon’s brand new browser, Amazon Silk. Silk is a revolutionary new browser, built from the ground up specifically for tablets and mobile devices, rather than PC’s.

 

Amazon is growing rapidly, and will soon be integrated into people’s lives just like Apple and Google are now. They have invested billions in their products, software, infrastructure, and services, and their strategy is beginning to pay off. Who knew a bookstore would transform into such a competitor in the retail, cloud computing, tablet, and online media markets, all at once?

Feel free to leave any questions or comments below!

Airlines Embrace iPad, Replace Flight Bags and Seating Charts

The iPad hasn’t even been around for two full years yet, but it’s already dominating the tablet market and changing the personal computer industry, while creeping into almost every other industry imaginable. The iPad is one of the main reasons PC sales are declining in the US. Other competitors try to come out with tablets of their own but it doesn’t seem to be working. Case in point: HP released its highly anticipated TouchPad less than three months ago, and they already discontinued it forever last week. Now this definitely has something to do with Google’s acquisition of Motorola last week, but HP cut the price multiple times to try and drive sales, but Best Buy could barely sell more than 25,000 of the 270,000 units they had in stock. Wow that sucks.

Now the iPad is taking to the sky and changing the airline industry. This week United Airlines announced that it would be purchasing 11,000 iPads for their pilots to go completely paperless, following Alaska Airlines decision to do so back in May. A new app allows the iPad to be converted into a pilot’s flight bag. Flight bag? How can an iPad replace a bag?? The pilot’s flight bag actually refers to the bag that pilots carry with them on every flight, containing paper operating manuals, navigation charts, reference handbooks, flight checklists, logbooks and weather information. This amounts to approximately 38 POUNDS, or 12,000 sheets of paper per pilot, according to loopinsight.com.

The iPad, weighing less than 1.5 pounds will not only save trees but also fuel. United Airlines estimates that switching to electronic flight bags will save around 19,000 trees each year. 38 less pounds on each of the thousands of flights UA does each year is also estimated to save an astounding 326,000 gallons of fuel each year.

British Airways is also using the iPads, but not for pilots. They recently rolled out iPads to 100 planes to be tested as customer service devices as well as to replace their paper flyer list. According to the press release, “The iPad lets crew quickly identify where each customer is seated, who they are travelling with, their Executive Club status and any special meal requests. It gives cabin crew a whole library of information at their fingertips including timetables, safety manuals and customer service updates. It also means any issues can be logged with ground-based colleagues around the network prior to departure so solutions can be delivered while the flight is airborne.”

Other airlines are testing the iPad for similar uses on their fleets, and it will be exciting to see what kind of things they do with Apple’s power tablet. There are concerns however, such as if the iPad fails, if it gets hacked, interferes with radio waves, etc. but overall, I think this is another example of how technology, and the iPad specifically, is revolutionizing an industry.

Feel free to leave any questions or comments below!

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