Brands have meaning. This is what Apple’s has meant to me.
Apple’s brand means something to almost everyone, and billions of times over, people have voted with their money that it means something good.
What if your company could implant a 1,000 word essay, inception style, into the memories of a few billion people? Each time one of those people saw your logo or heard your name, they’d recall what they drew from that essay as if you had their undivided attention for a 10 minute pitch. On top of that, what if your pitch was really good. It was clear, understood, relevant, delivered on its promises year after year, and made people feel something about what you stand for.
What if? Well, you’d have what Apple has: its brand. The most valuable asset of the most valuable company and the force behind the most successful product of all time.
A brand has that kind of power. Apple has understood this well and has executed on it better than any other company on earth. Without access to inception as a shortcut, they have been defining their brand bit by bit for ~40 years. There have been big examples (shipping the first personal computer), medium ones (not supporting Flash), and small ones (each individual word of copy on their website). Easily my favorite advice on branding comes from this short talk by Steve Jobs.
Many people seem to think Apple’s success with branding means they’ve pulled one over on us. That they’ve paired average-at-best technology with hand waving and a higher sticker price, and anyone that falls for it just doesn’t get it. To them, their brand (at least partially) means “gotcha, suckers!”
My take on Apple’s brand is different (as is most people’s).
To me, over the long stretch, Apple’s brand is the voice of reason in a 40 year conversation of how to build the best (chip-based) products, coupled with an uncompromising willingness to be the change they want to see in the world.
It’s on the basis of this brand — one that they had to earn by shipping great products, presenting them clearly, and shaping industries for the better — that I decide to spend more to buy their stuff. I haven’t been fooled, I’ve been sold.
How did it get this way
The golden ages of Apple building its brand have come under Steve Jobs. I was born in 1981 — so I didn’t get a chance to soak it all in the first time around. But watching Apple ship great products from 1998 to 2011, with Steve Jobs explaining it all beautifully on stage, was just great. It had a feeling of inevitability and confidence to it that was not unlike Disney putting out hit films in the early 90’s and Jordan’s Bulls winning title after title around the same time. That feeling — the one where you just know what they’re going to do is going to be great — led to what had to have been one of the largest increases in the value of any brand in any 10 year period.
Steve Jobs. Man, that guy was good at what he did. Sucks we lost him so soon. He left Apple in 2011 on much better footing than he did in 1985. Its brand is still strong. In the 5 years that Tim Cook has been in charge, I believe he’s done a fine job (if I even get to have an opinion being this far removed from his daily challenges) at the daunting task of continuing the legacy of the most successful company in the world.
If Steve’s Apple was Jordan’s Bulls, Cook’s Apple is LeBron’s Cavs. There’s been some great stuff:
- The one port Macbook: 👍
- iOS 7 redesign: 👍
- The concept of a wrist wearable: 👍
- Retina iMac: 👍
- Taking a stand on privacy: 👍
- Shortening the app-store review time 7 fold: 👍
- Killing the gold watch: 👍
- Killing the headphone jack: 👍
- Airpods: 👍
But also, some concerning stuff:
- That gold watch: 😔
- The retail store rollout of Watch v1 and the new Macbook: 😡
- The cheese-ification of the keynotes: 😐
- Apple Watch v1 delays, and, shipping with apps: 🤔
- Not giving the 4.0 or even 4.7 inch phones the flagship features: 😕
- Not even explaining the progress on the Mac line: 😶
- Black vs Jet Black: 🙄
Where does it go from here
Stylistically, while I preferred Jobs’s “I don’t care what you think” style, Cook’s “well, let me explain myself” just may be better suited for their now more mainstream audience (credit goes to John Gruber for drawing out that personality difference). And, they’ve clearly maintained a willingness to be the change they want to see in the world.
What I worry about most looking forward is their ability to continue to be that same voice of reason they were under Jobs. The evidence on that over the past 5 years is mixed. That said, I think, for 2 main reasons, that they can do it.
- The leadership transition is behind them. In the 2016 keynote, they took their lumps (even still, they hid them well). Transitions take time and bumps in the road are inevitable. (I experienced this personally at a much much smaller scale when I took over as CEO of Ticketleap 3.5 years ago). Several of those bumps — like key personnel changes, whatever it was that caused the delay of the watch, and whatever it was that resulted in the iPhone 7 not being a full redesign — are behind them, and there’s reason to be hopeful that they’ve found their new footing.
- More importantly, there is still no end in sight for the progression of Steve Jobs’s original vision for the role of the computer as a bicycle for the mind. There’s so much left to do to in building computing devices that augment our abilities — feels like we’re still at the beginning. I don’t think they’ve lost their compass here. I think Apple is in a great position to continue to deliver great products under that vision.
It doesn’t feel inevitable, like it did a decade ago, but, I still think smart money is on Apple to enter another golden age, where they continue to mount even more positive evidence, bit by bit, product by product, that their brand means something good. Until that changes, I’ll continue to be a holder of their stock and a consumer of their products.
