Why are there always so many people in the Apple store?

Myth Building

Before we get into Apple’s myths, we need to get a quick sense of what these semiotic myths are.

What is semiotics? As suggested by Wikipedia, semiotics is the study of meaning-making, which includes the study of signs, metaphor and symbolism.

Semiotics scholars believe that we live in a sign culture, where the world is experienced through images, and signs have taken a life of their own. Products we purchase are no longer evaluated in terms of their use or functionality, but rather in terms of what they signify about us. In The Objects of Affection, Arthur Asa Berger argues:

“Objects acquire cultural meaning and power in the context of stories and narratives that locate, value and render them visible and important within a culture.”

Without myths and meaning, products are merely an assortment of materials.

In semiotics, myths are cultural ideologies — essentially metaphors — from which are derived signs and codes. Simply put, myths are hidden cultural values, attitudes and beliefs which we perceive as ‘natural’, ‘common sense’, or even ‘universal’. For example, our perception of ‘beauty’ is very much a cultural myth. These myths unconsciously help us make sense of our social and cultural experiences, and in turn reveal much about a society.

Apple: the myth powerhouse

Brands such as Apple have become myth powerhouses, masters of seduction.

Brands no longer need to pitch their products to sell, rather they aim at gendering emotional cues in customers. A myth itself is seductive enough for consumers to feel the need to buy, without even having to mention the product. But this goes even further — brands become myths themselves. More than their products, brands help us define who we are and help us tell the world about ourselves.

This is where Apple excels at. With Apple products comes pre-packaged identity constructs, which lie in its advertising campaigns, product design and even retail architecture and management.

Within Apple’s myth powerhouse resides persona constructs, with which, us consumers, actively participate. Apple has understood that, in order to reach out to a mass of consumers, it needed to put people and life into the brand — essentially bringing the consumer into the brand-making. Through persona lifestyle advertising, and relying on a passion and emotion seeking audience, Apple creates a site of cultural meaning. The Apple brand becomes all about experiences, and reliving them.

Below are a few Apple persona myth examples.

The Scientist

Ever wondered why there are always so many people in Apple stores?

The Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York city, also known as the “Apple Cube”, consists of a simple glass cube, leading customers through a glass staircase to modern below-grade retail floors. Everything about the exterior and interior communicates an unmistakable newness and difference.

Most Apple stores welcome consumers with large lab-like wooden tables displaying the brand’s products, where shoppers may freely test out the latest good or experiment with the latest technology before purchasing it.

Both the stores’ architecture and interior design convey a homogenous sense of innovation, evoking a space where expert scientists or engineers make breakthrough inventions and discoveries. More importantly, stores even invite people to freely engage, feel and touch with the products, by which they become innovative scientists themselves — this is also part of what is called sensory marketing, on top of which they’ve added myth-making.

The theme of “newness” is pervasive across Apple’s product design and advertising as well. Apple incorporates a specific scent to its products, to convey a “newness” smell when customers first unbox the product. And then there’s Apple’s famous word-branding with recurring “revolutionary”, “new”, “incredible” and “magical” products.

From its stores and marketing, Apple draws the image of an innovation hub around the scientist’s brand persona, capable of breakthrough discoveries. The myth demands the audience’s active participation, and the hands-on aspect of the persona invites the audience to take on the character and believe in becoming the innovative scientist. Consumers become the myth themselves.

The Free Artist

Self-expression, self-expression, self-expression

The Apple store’s hands-on experience also suggests an artist persona; the large wooden tables, for instance, are reminiscent of a craftsmen’s or artist’s desk as well. Creativity is indeed a large part of Apple’s brand, which it conveys further through myth around the senses and intuition.

At a time when the idea of a computer in every home had not yet sold the public, Apple started to position its computers as tools for re-enchanting the world. Apple computers underwent a Cinderella-like transformation, from dull computers to seductive iMacs. Under Steve Jobs, the brand reimagined technology, not as a dehumanising force, but as something liberating and natural. Rather than talking about megahertz and megabytes, Apple made computing accessible to computer illiterates. Rapidly, the emphasis became on making movies, sharing music and publishing photos on personal websites.

The iPod encouraged self-expression as well, by inviting spontaneous creativity and personalisation. In its ads, different silhouetted dancers letting loose to music from their iPods, each with different coloured backgrounds. The iPods was about letting loose, fun and — most importantly —art through self-expression.

In the 2007 “Get a Mac” campaign, by using Mac and PC characters as binary opposition — where one is all that the other is not — Apple depicted the dichotomy between the casual, confident, creative Mac user and the formal, frustrated, fun-deprived PC user. Here, the attractive Mac character mirrors Apple’s myth of creativity and play.

Through the experience of Apple products and its marketing campaigns, Apple consumers relive and self-identity as the seductive, creative artist persona. As the myth suggests, Apple products are expressive goods, with creative features, that render its owner as a creative artist himself or herself.

The Genius Misfit

“It is better to be a pirate than to join the Navy” — Steve Jobs

Then there’s Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” campaign. The ad juxtaposed images of Gandhi, Einstein, Bob Dylan, Picasso, “the misfits, rebels, crazy ones who changed the world.”

The campaign was a mirror of another Apple value; while some may see “crazy ones”, Apple sees genius. This smart misfit and rebel is also an essential persona to the brand. In Job’s words, “It is better to be a pirate than to join the Navy”. Apple has always associated with a counter-culture image. Leander Kahney (lkahney) in The Cult of Mac puts it very well:

Even though Apple itself is a large corporation, the cult of Macintosh revels in the outlaw, anti-corporate and rebellious spirit that form the romantic myth of Apple. When IBM employees were known for their white shirts, clean-cut grooming and conservative suits, Apple employees were known for their jeans, T-shirts, sandals and long hair

Nowadays, Apple store employees are dubbed “Geniuses” and hang out by the “Genius Bar”. The once rebellious misfit has turned into a “Genius” in Jobs’s image. To identify with Apple, is also to identify as a genius misfit. To use Apple products is to “Think Different” like Einstein and Gandhi. Just as the crazy misfits have “changed the world”, Apple, its products and its consumers change it too.

The Philosopher

I think, therefore iMac

Through the same “Think Different” campaign, Apple also imagined the computer as a metaphor for the human mind.

As an extension to the idea, Apple’s 1999 “I think, therefore iMac” was inspired by Enlightenment philosopher Rene Descartes’s “I think, there I am”. Affiliation with the brand becomes a philosophy as well as a way of thinking. Behind Apple’s brand is a particular thinker. And in this digital age, the thinker becomes modern philosopher.

As Apple started personifying its computers, it aimed at minimising the boundary between man and machine, where the computer becomes an extension of our own mind. In the ad, the operating system is just that — a metaphor for the mind.

By substituting “iMac” for “I am”, the ad sets up a similitude between thinking and computing. The iMac is granted human likeness, and the consumer associates with the computer’s way of looking at the world. The ad serves a myth for the iMac as an extension of ourselves, with similar creativity, productivity, sociability and memory. iMac and consumer become one.

Brett T. Robinson argues that the ad serves an existentialist statement too, where “owning a personal computer that connects to the Internet affirms my being in the digital world.”

In fact, the ad evokes the Greek Narcissus myth, where a man is transfixed by his own reflection in the water. Marshal McLuhan argued that “men at once become fascinated by an extension of themselves in any material other than themselves.” Narcissus did not recognise the reflection as himself, and was thus not admiring himself, but mistook the reflection in the water for another person. Likewise, our attraction of the iMac stems in part from an admiration of ourselves.

In this sense, Apple products become modern thinking, from where is created a modern philosopher persona. This persona suggests an intricate merging between product and identity, where both become one.