Apple’s Attachment Challenge

When Jobs worked with Chiat to position Apple as the brand For The Crazy Ones, producing the famous campaign of artists, provocateurs, risk-takers and change-makers, Apple laid the groundwork for establishing a deeply meaningful relationship with its user-base. The Think different campaign encouraged non-conformity, standing apart, believing in oneself.

In the vernacular of Attachment Theory, Apple was inviting a relationship of “being known” — a very highly developed attachment style.

A quick primer on Attachment Theory. Attachment Theory posits that warm and caring parents who are around produce children that are securely attached while children brought up in unpredictable environments without available caregivers become insecurely attached. One develops more secure attachment styles in a stepped process. Gordon Neufeld calls it the ladder of attachment. First comes proximity. Then Sameness, Belonging, Significance, Affection and finally Being Known. Less secure people attached through Sameness & Belonging. More secure people attach with Affection & Being Known.

So Apple invites people to attach by Being Known. Now Being Known is a high-risk high-reward attachment style. You expose your weaknesses, but in return you get total acceptance — a powerful emotion. As such, it is part of the bonding repertoire of highly secure individuals. 1

A brand that is able to bond with others by Being Known enjoys great benefits. Among these are greater forgiveness/affordance and greater loyalty. Why is that? For one, the bond comes from the mutual knowledge and forgiveness of the faults of the actors. So when Apple disappoints, it does not immediately escalate into a challenge to the relationship.

The Apple brand was signaling to people a specific attachment style. And yes, brands form attachment relationships with their users the same way people form attachment relationships to other people. 1, 2

Apple was able to establish this relationship with its users for a couple of reasons. For one, the product design and experience supported the value proposition of individuality, independence, and non-conformity. In the second quarter of 1997 when the campaign launched, only 3.8% of PCs were Macs. They sold less than 365,000 units in the US. If you were working on a Mac you were de facto the small minority. And as Apple gained a foothold in the creative fields, this notion was amplified.

Even more significantly, Apple had a small, coherent, and singularly distinguished user-base. Users, I would argue, over-indexed for being higher socio-economic status. Before the first iMac launched in 1998, the cost of a Mac was not a laughing matter. The 1997 Powerbook G3 sold for, wait for it, $5700 ($8336 fixed for inflation). Consequently, the users were securely attached. You see, attachment is highly correlated with socioeconomic status. Lower income families, for one, have less ability for primary caretakers to be available to children to nurture attachment competencies.3,4,5

The strategy worked well. Highly attached folks enjoyed identifying as different and as change agents. They looked for like-minded entities to share their world-view and values. Apple became a powerful ally and actor in a transformation moment around personal computing. Apple ads went on to detail how their users were each unique, flawed, and amazing. “What’s On Your Powerbook.”

Apple was not really at all about perfection. It was about the pursuit of beauty and balance in a way that was confident and embracing of their own flaws.

Today, Apple holds about 6% market share globally in the PC market, shipping about 4 million PCs. But, the nature of computers has changed. When you count iPads and iPhones, Apple sells about as many devices than all the Windows PCs + phones combined. 169 million iPhones and 67 million iPads in 2014. And an entry-level Air costs $899, a 10th of the cost of the Powerbook G3.

With devices a fraction the price and selling on orders more computers globally, Apple can no longer assume that its audience is homogeneous. Everyone is an Apple user?

Which begs the question, when marketing to large mainstream audience globally, what is the form of attachment that is more effective and authentic for the brand and within the abilities of its users? Most Apple users today are not comfortable or capable of attaching by Being Known. Yet, in some ways Apple continues to convey this proposition in the advertising. For many, this invitation is uncomfortable. It is like asking someone to karaoke. Some folks are totally turned off.

Can Apple move down the attachment ladder, say to Significance, and remain both true to itself and relevant? With Significance, Apple would be saying that you are unique and special — just as Apple is unique and special. Think how AMEX positions itself — a group of people who stand apart from the masses and have import. A slightly more accessible style, if not more approachable, but also more shallow. Plus, it is not a style that is really that democratic, when compared to belonging and loyalty.

It depends in part on who Apple wants to cater to as it grows. To be a truly accessible brand for the masses, you have to adopt an attachment posture that the majority of folks can participate in. And don’t mistaken less secure attachment styles with the forcefulness of the attachment. More insecure forms of attachment are certainly not anemic. Just think of the power of sports as an attachment medium and you get a sense of the power that belonging and loyalty as forms of attachment can have on behavior.

Or is it possible for a brand to segment its audience and try to attach depending upon the available repertoire of attachment styles for each segment? Highly secure people do this all the time; they modulate their attachment style to the individuals they are interacting with. But what then, does this say about the heart of the Apple Brand? Can it stand for Think Different, communicate significance for others, and relate to the masses through sameness and loyalty?

These are uncharted territories.

For Apple, Think Different was as close to a mission statement as you get, and defined the internal culture. It was manifested in the way the company did business. It was anti-establishment. Not wearing shoes, no deodorant… hallmarks of a leader creating a company rooted in the belief that being known was of tantamount importance. So it is more than just an attachment “style” — it is arguably core to the brand. But the idea is problematic for many people. So extending this to the masses may be well intended but problematic.

The only saving grace is that many people in the US at least are securely attached, a large universe of potential customers. Research has shown that about 56–60% of people in the US, at least, are securely attached — people who may have the competencies to play in the significance, affection, and being known modalities of relationships. In Northern Germany a study found that 24% were securely attached. 7, 6 That is still a very large market. But it also leaves a lot of people outside of the franchise. For Apple to be a truley global brand, it needs to be accessible to all. And many, maybe most, of the people on this planet, are not securly attached.

REFERENCES:

1.Samy Belaida, Azza Temessek Behib. The role of attachment in building consumer-brand relationships: an empirical investigation in utilitarian consumption context. Cahier de reserche. Working Paper. No. 69. 2010.

2. Hazan, C. & Shaver, P. (1987) Romantic Love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524.

3. Conger, Rand D., Katherine J. Conger, and Monica J. Martin. “Socioeconomic Status, Family Processes, and Individual Development.” Journal of marriage and the family 72.3 (2010): 685–704. PMC. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.

4. Hackman, Daniel A., Martha J. Farah, and Michael J. Meaney. “Socioeconomic Status and the Brain: Mechanistic Insights from Human and Animal Research.” Nature reviews. Neuroscience 11.9 (2010): 651–659. PMC. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.

5. Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, Pieter M. Kroonenberg. “Differences in attachment security between African–American and white children: ethnicity or socio-economic status?” Infant Behavior & Development 27 (2004) 417–433

6. Andreassen, C., & West, J. (2007). Measuring socioemotional functioning in a national birth cohort study. Infant Mental Health Journal, 28(6), 627–646.

7. Keller, Heidi. “Attachment and Culture.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2013, 44: 175–194.