Marketing Apple: Secrets of the World's Best Marketing Machine

Congrats, Steve. Fortune's "CEO of the Decade"

 

What more can I say. One man remade computers, music, movies and phones.

Bravo!

BTW, the answer to the Gizmodo blog about the original name for iMac was "C1".  Short for "Compact One"  Guess what the original name for the iBook was?

How do you say "spin" in Chinese?

Interesting story by Philip Elmer-DeWitt (probably the coolest financial journalist name ever) about how poorly sales of iPhones have gone in China.

Is it me, or is there a story everyday spelling doom for the Cupertino cash machine?

When I used to work at Apple (1991-1999) we had our share of real issues.  Our machines in those days were overpriced and underpowered and based on the failing PowerPC platform.  Developers were leaving the platform in droves for better pastures in Windows-land. There was no roadmap for new Apple products or even a new operating system.  Even if you loved the Mac good luck finding one in Circuit City or (yikes!) BJs, Costco and Sears (yes, we sold them there in those days). Yet with some Stevie J. magic and some amazingly good marketing (and just a bit of that reality distortion field thrown in Philip) we managed to turn that ship around.

Flash-forward ten years and everything that ailed the company is now a huge asset. Apple products are competitively priced and based on the newest Intel chipsets.  The App Store is now the new platform for small developers to get to market and make some real cash.  Apple's roadmap and design prowess has never been sharper and the world is beating a path (literally) to Apple Store doors.  And there is real innovation here - unlike the original iMac which was really no better than the Performa it replaced (yet marketed a whole lot better - get the theme?)  And have you seen or used a new iPod Nano lately? (my son just got one.)  Amazing.  And a lot more 'amazing' is coming soon...

So I have a message for the financial pundits out there spelling Apple doom.  If it didn't happen in the 90s, it ain't gonna happen now. Save your ink. 

If any of you folks who read this blog want to save some money and help your wallet, please sign up for a free 30-day trial of my Dimdim web conferencing product by clicking this link.  It will save you a lot of cash vs WebEx, a lot of heartache (it works equally well on Mac, Windows and Linux and doesn't require your meeting guests to install anything) and may even help your business during this flu season.  And to have some fun, I'll give away an iPod Nano to 2 random people over the next few days who simply try Dimdim free.

UPDATE 11/4: Winner of the first iPod Nano is Dimdim ID pk22901.  If this is YOU, send your mailing address to steve @ dimdim.com so I can ship it along with your pick of colors: Blue, Green, Yellow or Red.  I'll give out the next and final winner tomorrow night, so sign up soon!

This is Actually a Big Deal for Apple

I'm glad to see this.  As I asked way back when, Apple is now finally starting to leverage social media.  This is a big deal, and one that Apple will wonder why they took so long embracing.  See, Apple is on one hand afraid of a message it can't control (social media) yet on the other hand benefits more than any other company from the fervor of its fans (social media).

Would you follow an official Apple Twitter profile?  And what would Apple say in their updates beyond product news?  Stay tuned!

Microsoft Family Guy

UPDATE: 10/23: Microsoft CANCELS Family Guy Promo

What do you think about this?  I LOVE Family Guy (one of my few guilty pleasures) but I'm not sure I'm ready to listen to Peter talk about Windows 7.  And as a marketer who takes a few risks, I wonder if this is too risky for Microsoft (albeit it HAS to be better than Windows House Party!)  What say you all?

Anti-iPhone Ads Hit the Airways

It's been 2 years in the making, but the first true anti-iPhone ads aimed squarely at the key features missing from that platform have begun running.  Check it out:

So the question is - can the iPhone be undone by a combination of better design and better marketing (the same way the iPhone put the smackdown on all the other smartphones before it?) Clearly this is compelling marketing to get people talking - but is it enough to unseat the iPhone?  We know that it has piqued people's interest - but will the campaign alone get people to wait for the Android phone?   Thoughts?

Breaking News: Mac Users are Richer than Windows Users

And therefore they can afford both Macs and Windows in their homes.  This report says that an astonishingly high 85% of Mac users also own a Windows computer at home.  Do you?  Vote now:

Apple Apps Are a Prelude to Something Bigger

Imagine being able to listen to any song ever recorded any time you wish.  Watch part of any movie ever made in seconds.  Enjoy any TV show wherever you are.

To a certain extend, with iTunes and an iPhone or iPod Touch today you can.  Maybe not any song, or any movie or any TV program but many of them.  Fast forward a few years and pretty soon you may have them all in one delivery vehicle accessible wirelessly wherever you are.

The days of creating your own physical library of LPs, or video tapes or DVDs is nearing an end.  For a small subscription and an even smaller performance fee you will be able to watch and listen to any content anywhere in the world any time you desire.  This is not a matter of if, but when.  The digital writing is on the wall.

If you think about the above you may notice something I did a few years ago.  Media and software are basically the same thing but we tend to think about them differently.  If I said you will be able to use any program any time you want for a small fee you might think me nutty. But the Apple App Store is actually the ultimate software distribution system.  Developers create programs, upload them to Apple and users download them wirelessly on their devices, all wrapped in a very nice micro-payment system. Right now Apple only supports the iPhone and iPod apps but they can soon support other types of computers and operating systems just as easily.  Soon you may be able to buy, install and use Microsoft Word on your tablet just as easily as you can watch yesterday's episode of Heroes.

While the rest of the world rushes to cloud based computing platforms (like Dimdim) Apple has created a cloud-based, wireless media distribution system that has already revolutionized the entertainment industry and is poised to rock the software industry as well.  And so that begs the question.  Is Apple a hardware - or software - company?  Chime in!

UPDATE: Is Apple Marketing out of steam?

UPDATE OCT 1, 2009: My free eBook gives Apple credit for being the "world's best marketing company"  But after watching the latest Apple "Get a Mac" commercial during this weekend's NFL schedule I started to wonder if Apple marketing is now just sleepwalking.  This commercial is pretty bland, and the characters are not really engaged.  An extremely long cord?  Not even funny.  And is it me or does the Mac guy (Justin Long) mumble - I have trouble understanding what he is saying sometimes.

In any event, with iPods and music now saturated and their growth down, Apple has to resort to pumping up the App store and iPhones but can't lose sight of the desktop and Mac OS vs Windows 7 battle that is looming (32 days from now the second coming of Windows launches and the publicity will be deafening.)  FWIW, I'm not a big fan of the "Happy Words" Windows 7 tv ads either. UPDATE 9/23 OMG! Now the whole world is making fun of Microsoft's ad campaigns.  What do you think?

So come on Apple, lets see some true innovation in marketing instead of merely poking fun at PC innovations.  Perhaps you are protecting your marketing with the same bubble wrap you compare as PC innovations...why is it I can't embed your videos from Apple.com but I can from YouTube? 

So let me know with your comments here: can Apple do better?

 

UPDATE: Here is the MS Video in question:

Apple Responds to the FCC

Apple today answers the FCC's questions relating to the Google Voice application rejection.

This is a classic case for Apple's marketing department: how to come out looking like the user champion and not a company involved in anti-competitive practices.  As the alternative PC company, Apple has always had to walk a super-fine line between being a business behemoth and that friendly, happy brand.  In essence, they've had to become the "PC" PC maker.

So read between the lines in this release and you'll see Apple's marketing magic eke out: (I'll translate for ya!)

Apple Marketing Message: We're the good guys.  "The App Store provides a frictionless distribution network that levels the playing field for individual and large developers of mobile applications. We provide every developer with the same software that we use to create our own iPhone applications"  

Reality distortion field turned off: Actually, that's not really true.  You can't delete an iPhone application.  And you can't decide who gets featured on the store or their TV commercials.  So not really a level playing field.

Apple Marketing Message: We know what we're doing, so let us keep doing it." The App Store has been more successful than anyone could have ever imagined. Today, just over a year since opening, the App Store offers over 65,000 iPhone applications, and customers have downloaded over 1.5 billion applications."

Reality distortion field turned off: The App Store works in concert with the iPhone.  No other store is allowed to.  How successful would it be if it had any real competition?

Apple Marketing Message: Developers have choices: "We are continuing to study the Google Voice application and its potential impact on the iPhone user experience. Google is of course free to provide Google Voice on the iPhone as a web application through Apple’s Safari browser, just as they do for desktop PCs, or to provide its “Google-branded” user experience on other phones, including Android-based phones, and let consumers make their choices."  

Reality distortion field turned off: Um, how is Google Voice going to run in Safari?  It would require a way to install software on the phone.  Oh yeah, there is a way, it's called the App Store.  Oops.

Apple Marketing Message: Without Apple, your phones would still suck. "In little more than a year, we have raised the bar for consumers’ rich mobile experience beyond what we or anyone else ever imagined in both scale and quality."

Reality distortion field turned off: Let's face it, the iPhone + App Store is much better than what came before.  But this is all groundwork for the true goal: a software distribution system the world has never seen - software delivered wirelessly to computers, phones, tablets, cars, refrigerators, TVs and alarm clocks.  When Apple says "ever imagined" they mean "what we've told you about."

Stay tuned.  It gets more interesting later this year.

Apple vs Palm and Mistakes

Update: Today, July 24t4, Palm struck back - releasing a fix that reenables Pre use on iTunes.  But just how this did it is interesting - and the war of word between Apple and Palm has stepped up to a new level.  Read this to learn more.

I think this is another in a line of mistakes that Apple has made regarding the iPod and iPhone.  Apple today released a new version of iTunes which now prevents the Palm Pre from syncing as it does with an iPod or iPhone. 

I understand that Apple has to control its ecosystem - but every Palm Pre user is ostensibly also a user of iTunes and has purchased music from the iTunes Music Store.  Apple, remember when you only made iTunes and iPods for Mac users?  Why should this be much different?  The marketing effect of enabling this will generate more demand for iPhone as the Pre really hasn't hurt your iPhone marketshare at all.

On a similar point, why has Apple made it impossible to recover your own music library when your computer crashes?  I recently lost my entire hard drive on my MacBook Pro and had to rebuild it from scratch.  I had my entire music library on my iPhone, but I could not simply rebuild it from that backup.  While I eventually found a 3rd party solution, why can't Apple do this for us?  It definitely gives the user another reason to trust Apple as music provider and would encourage more sales from the Music Store. 

Finally, why give Microsoft any reason to crow about it's "It's a PC" ads.  This seems like a gross miscalculation and just empowers a competitor, if in fact it is true. Anyone care to comment?

Steve

Live from Vilnius

Hi everyone!

I'm giving a keynote speech in a few minutes here at the Siemens Arena in Vilnius, Lithuania at the Login09 Event. I'm speaking about how Apple returned from the brink of bankruptcy using great design and great marketing.

In particular I will spill the beans about how Apple pioneered in social media long before it was called social media by addressing very human needs of community, purpose and connectedness. I'll try to liveblog today. In the meantime enjoy this picture of the local language version of Leander's book on Steve Jobs.

I really enjoyed my talk.  Great crowd, fun social media experiments.  Here are a few more photos taken live from my iPhone (the last one while on the stage live)

 

 

 

True Power of Social Networking

So I was checking my blog stats today and noticed a link from YouTube.  Naturally I followed it and found a 20 year old pharmacy student, DRBUK who is clearly a passionate member of the Apple community, pontificating over my free eBook with just a webcam and microphone. Editing be damned.

I left a message for him via YouTube and he quickly responded.  I told him I'd blog about it today and send some traffic his way.  Feel free to hit him up and see his unique take on my eBook.

I consider this another example of the power of social networking.  I don't know Adrian (that's his name) and he doesn't know me.  Yet a quick look at my website analytics and I found someone clearly as passionate about Apple marketing as I am.  Networks like Ning let like minded people find each other, tools like Eloqua enable marketers to gauge the interests of prospects, and solutions like Dimdim enable real-time, rich media interactions.

I'd love to hear from you about interactions like this that would never have been possible just a few years ago.  Sometimes you need to stop and take a breath to realize just how connected a world we now live in.  In any event, this is a wonderful time to be a marketer.

BTW, I'll be giving a keynote speech on Apple's Social Media Secrets in Vilinius, Lithuania next week, June 4th as part of the Login '09 event.

P.S. Steve Jobs will make a surprise appearance at WWDC.

UPDATE: Just got a Google Blogsearch Report pointing to another multimedia file today.  Enjoy.

Web Conferencing Made Easy - Signup for Dimdim Web Conferencing for less than $20 per month!

iPhone vs Pre

Lots of people are making a big deal about the collision course that the Palm Pre and the iPhone are on.  Today the Palm Pre was officially given a ship date: June 6th at a $199 price point (after rebate.)  Not coincidentally, this is 2 days before Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC as it is known.)  Not surprisingly, people are Twittering up the Palm Pre today and many are speculating that the iPhone finally has real competition.  Engadget is even running a poll today where one of the choices (currently the most popular one) is "are you waiting for WWDC" before you buy one.

Needless to say, the Palm Pre has benefitted from early buzz of Apple-level proportions.  This is rare for any company, but particularily amazing considering Palm was widely believed to be near bankruptcy.  [And it is no coincidence that many former Apple folks now work at Palm who learned their marketing skills at the side of the Master himself.]

The Pre is to Palm what the iMac was to Apple: a new product where innovative marketing is just (or even more) important to the success of the company than that product's feature set.  The iMac marketing (and subsequent iMac sales) saved Apple from bankruptcy and paved the way for the iPod and iPhone succcess. 

Will the Pre do the same for Palm?

BTW, today is my birthday (I'm 9 years younger than the other Steve) if you Palm guys wanna send some Pre love my way ;)

One Billion Apps And Apple Earnings Hide a Surprise

You saw in yesterday's news that Apple had a good quarter in spite of the economy and doubled the number of iPod Touchs sold. (I helped; giving away four myself).  What's more, today Apple broke through 1 billion apps downloaded.  At the same time, Tim Cook declared that Apple isn't interested in building crappy netbooks with tiny screens and cramped keyboards.

What is hidden in plain sight is this: Apple already has.  It's called the iPod Touch.

A computer that fits in your pocket, runs any type of software imaginable, plays your songs, tracks your calendar, even does email and phone and Web when near WiFi.  This thing is a netbook!  (tiny screen and crappy keyboard notwithstanding)

This is typical Apple.  They tell us they aren't interested in a market, then they produce something just a little different and declare the market has changed "One Billion Apps!" and now they are leading it.

When I worked at Apple we used to tell a joke that went like this:

Q: "How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?"
A: "None.  Microsoft will just declare darkness as the new standard."

How the times have changed.

Btw, I'm still giving away stuff.  Best chance ever to win something every day is right here.

Is Apple a Rave?

My good friend David Meerman Scott's great new book "World Wide Rave" is rising up the business book charts because its practical advice makes sense in today's economy. Put simply, Rave looks at what triggers a worldwide phenomenon and how any marketer can use modern tools like blogs, Twitter, and social media to have buyers notice and take action.

This is similar to one of my 5 Secrets of Apple Marketing in my free eBook: how to empower users to help you generate lift for your products or services. David has a whole case study in his book about how I launched this MarketingApple blog and explores other success stories in a clear, conversational style. He even made the book portable; it is small and easy to read, share, and in my case strongly recommend.

While David has not focused on Apple's amazing turnaround and the runaway success that started in 1997 with the launch of the iMac, I think it is fair to say that even though Apple pre-dates the social media tools David outlines in his book, Apple blazed the trail around exciting and connecting users via multiple World Wide Raves. Maybe that story deserves its own volume.

In the meantime buy this book (it's right there in the right side of this page in my sidebar) and learn even more secrets you can employ today. Enjoy!