I recently watched a video of Steve Jobs talking about marketing. I pulled out a few excerpts to capture the essence of his talk.
“… marketing’s about values.
This is a very complicated world. It’s a very noisy world. And we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.
Now, Apple, fortunately, is one of the half a dozen best brands in the whole world, right up there with Nike, Disney, Coke, Sony. It is one of the greats of the greats. Not just in this country but all around the globe.…
But the best example of all and one of the greatest jobs of marketing that the universe has ever seen is Nike.
Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes. And yet, when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company. In their ads, they don’t ever talk about the product. They don’t ever tell you about their air soles and why they’re better than Reebok’s air soles.
What does Nike do in their advertising? They honor great athletes, and they honor great athletics. That’s who they are. That’s what they are about. “
Jobs on developing the Think Different campaign:
“…the question we asked was: … who is Apple and what is it that we stand for? Where do we fit in this world?
What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their job done. Although we do that well. We do that better than almost anybody in some cases. But Apple’s about something more than that.
Apple’s core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe. And we’ve had the opportunity to work with people like that. We’ve had an opportunity to work with people like you, with software developers, with customers who have done it, in some big and some small ways.
We believe that in this world, people can change it for the better. And that those people that are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that actually do.
… And so, we wanted to find a way to communicate this. And what we have is something that I am very moved by. It honors those people who have changed the world. Some of them are living. Some of them are not. But the ones that aren’t, as you’ll see, you know that if they ever used the computer, it would have been a Mac. The theme of the campaign is “Think different”. It’s honoring the people who think differently, and who move this world forward. And it is what we are about. It touches the soul of this company.”
The Script to Think Different Ad
“Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels,
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”