The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

World News: Apple Launch A Slightly Better Product!

With electronic companies investing billions of bucks to develop the next ‘big thing’ … I wonder how many have stopped and realised how important their brand ‘philosophy’ is in influencing the World’s reaction to their news.

Case in point: Apple.

Yep, Steve Jobs has gone and upgraded their iPOD Nano’s and Shuffles. Again.

OK, so there’s a few new features [and yes, the Shuffle does look great] … but it’s still essentially more of the same and yet all around the World, news channels happily put aside time and space to promote it like it was the 2nd coming.

That didn’t happen when SAMSUNG launched their 4gb music phone nor when SONY launched their new Alpha camera range … and yet by adding a little extra memory and a brighter light, Apple has got more global coverage than any ad campaign could hope to achieve.

Why?

Well, I think it’s because the public regard Apple as a company that has a passion to create great products before great profits.  They feel they are an organisation that wants to ‘do the right thing by the people’ and will spend time really crafting their products technically and aesthetically. 

And whilst there has been some mutterings about Apple and their new found ‘greed’ … compared to the faceless, corporately focused companies most of us encounter everyday, Apple continue to be seen as the ‘good guys’.

To be fair, they deserve it.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with them for many years  and without doubt, they really do give a damn about giving their customers the best ‘end-product’ possible. [Not just the best ‘end-product’ Apple can produce, but the best bar none]

And because of this, even when they have a massive disaster like the Newton [their version of the Palm Pilot] people still forgive them because they feel Apple are a company trying to do things for the right reasons, rather than simply aiming to make as much money as possible at consumers expense.

Of course there’s other factors in their success … the fact they were/are the underdog, the fact the graphic design industry use them, the fact they are synonymous with creativity rather than pure technology, the fact they have an incredibly charismatic ‘head’, the fact they make beautiful looking ‘stuff’ … but as much as the greatest growth for companies over the last few years has come from new product development rather than advertising, one of the key factors that has allowed certain companies to disproportionately succeed over others [apart from things like distribution, exploitation of new opportunities etc] has to be that they expressed [and lived] a ‘cultural philosophy’ that was clearly and compelling understood by the masses.

How ironic that a time where more and more companies are saying brand communication is of no value to them, the need for it [accepting the company has the biggest role to play in it], is more than ever.

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