HappySqurriel said:
Scoobes said:
HappySqurriel said:
At its best, Apple was probably the best company in the world at marketing "technology" to non-technical people. The marketing wasn't just limited to the advertisements that ran on television and it includes the physical design of the devices and the presentation of the company. The net result was existing ideas were presented to customers for the first time in a way that appealed to them, and they believed that Apple came up with those ideas.
While it may not be fair to give him all of the credit for this, I believe that Steve Jobs was the mastermind behind the brilliant marketing of Apple and (in my opinion) I already see signs that they are having difficulty managing this without him. The recent Mac Store geniuses commercials demonstrate this problem fairly clearly in my opinion. While Apple was heavily marketing their products as being exceptionally easy to use under Steve Jobs, the Mac Store geniuses commercials show users having difficulty accomplishing simple tasks which will (likely) be interpreted by viewers as meaning Apple products are difficult to use OR Apple users are morons. Another example of a change is how lawsuit crazy Apple has become; and I suspect that under Steve Jobs Apple would have been more interested in protecting their anti-corporate image than winning a lawsuit. |
Actually, I think Steve Jobs was the one that initiated the lawsuits. He wanted to vigorously defend Apple's patents.
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You are probably right, but that does seem odd being that a lot of Apple's success seems to come from people thining that they're not a big "mean" corporation.
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They've had years of playing second fiddle to Microsoft in the OS space to build that reputation not to mention all the clever marketing tricks (the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads for example). They basically built up an image of being "for the consumers/customers" whilst MS went for the business market first (mean corporations) and home customers second. Even the Apple Stores and the staff training are designed with this in mind.
Now they're the market leader in a number of segments so it'll be difficult to maintain that image. When you're on top, more people are watching and it's much easier to scrutinise everything you do.
