Since the launch of the industry's revolutionary iPhone, iPad and subversive business model of the application store model, Apple has become the new favorite of users and media, any wind and grass, can trigger a tidal wave of social media discussion, can be described as the "king" of this era with its own traffic aura. Today, the company, which was originally born in the garage and was on the verge of bankruptcy, is one of the world's most valuable and brand-influential companies.
Not only the product, Apple's unique brand philosophy, marketing strategy, advertising campaigns and minimalist copywriting have also become business legends for people to talk about. Some people even commented that there is a kind of marketing called "Apple's marketing"!
So, what exactly is the marketing philosophy that makes Apple the top of the industry? How does Apple build a simple and efficient marketing system? Why does an ad always surprise people?
Core Point Tips:
1, Apple marketing three philosophies: resonance, focus, indoctrination
2. Apple's marketing whole chain innovation: product - conference - creativity and content - user experience - social responsibility
3. There is a humanistic spirit hidden in innovation
4. Products and retail stores have become a way of life
5. Integrate brand values into every detail
Apple's three philosophies of marketing: resonance, focus, and indoctrination
Apple's brand marketing is inseparable from the three keywords of "resonance, focus and indoctrination", which is the "Apple marketing philosophy" set when Apple was founded as early as 1977.
At that time, Jobs hired Mike Marcoola and wrote a business plan. Marcuola told Jobs that you should never start a company with the purpose of making money, your goal should be to make a product that you believe in and start a company with a strong vitality.
To that end, Marcuola wrote down three of the most important marketing ideas, later known as the "Apple Marketing Philosophy": empathy, which closely combines customer feelings and understands user needs better than any other company; focus, which must rule out all unimportant opportunities in order to do a good job; and impute, a good company that learns to instill. Every effort must be made to convey its value and importance, from packaging to marketing.
It is the "Apple marketing philosophy" that runs through the whole process, creating Apple's "brand myth".
Apple marketing full chain innovation
Products - Launches - Ideas & Content - User Experience - Social Responsibility
For the ultimate pursuit of brand building, value resonance and product marketing, integrated into the whole process of Apple product release, with eye-catching product innovation as the core, holding a very explosive release conference, through humanized copywriting, advertising, content and celebrity communication planning, as well as universal participation in the experience store marketing, and then integrate a high sense of value corporate social responsibility, integrated to reach and touch users.
>> product-oriented: developing products that are truly exciting
Apple's core competitiveness lies in making great products that resonate with consumers. This is also the basis of all marketing. From the launch of the personal computer iMac in 1998 to the iPod, which swept the world after its launch in 2001, to the MacBook that received rave reviews as soon as it came out in 2006, the iPhone that detonated the smartphone revolution in 2007, and the tablet iPad that broke the record in 2010, Apple has been playing the role of "leader" to promote the development of software and hardware in the entire intelligent industry.
As a "humanistic technology" evangelist, Apple has been popular with a large number of fruit fans because of its excellent product design and experience since its birth. As Jobs put it, "The key to Apple is that we're going to make products that are really exciting." In the process of product development, Jobs often turned over for perfection, and the team suffered because of it, but made products that resonated with consumers.
>> launch: Stimulate the secretion of dopamine in the brain of the audience
Apple's annual autumn new product launch, that is, the release of the new iPhone, has become the "Spring Festival Gala" of the technology industry, drawing countless attention. Behind this, it is also related to the importance of Jobs. Previously, Apple's product launch, Jobs carefully prepared every time, including scenes, props, slides, etc., rehearsed repeatedly.
Jobs's wife, Lauren, said: "He had to change every slide six or seven times. Before each presentation, I would accompany him to prepare for a few nights. He made each page into three different styles of slides, and then asked Lauren to pick the best one. He was very devoted to it, flipping through each sentence, changing a word or two, and repeating it again.
In His Magic Speech, Kamien Gallo writes, "Jobs's speeches tend to stimulate the secretion of dopamine in the listener's brain. ”
>> copywriting: the more "lazy to the extreme" the more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people
Continuing the minimalist product style, Apple has also achieved minimalism in the new product copywriting, and can resolutely not use two words in one word. Every iPhone copywriter can always trigger a wave of discussion on social media, whether it is praise or spitting.
Specifically, Apple-style copywriting is good at using repetition, puns, top truth, comparison, wrong idioms, disassembling idioms at will, and "A is B, B or B" rhetorical techniques. Some people commented that this highly recognizable copywriting comes from apple's creation of an unconvincing sense of strangeness, colloquial grounding, and a unique language style.
For example, just on the new iPhone 12 new product copywriting: "big refresh, small fresh", "giant giant 5G", "charging, speeding up", "mix and match, perfect match"...
For example, Apple's "stacked" copywriting mode, the iPhone4S "excellent iPhone, is now even better." The "iPhone 5" is more and more, a lot less. The "iPhone5S" is ahead of its time and unprecedented. "iPhone5SE" is a small step in the big step. The "iPhone 6" is bigger than bigger. ”
>> advertising creativity: there is a humanistic spirit hidden in innovation
Apple not only creates classic products, but also classic advertising, always perfectly blending technology and emotion, and there is a humanistic spirit hidden in innovation, which resonates with users.
For example, the classic "1984" ads and "extraordinary" ads. The "Think Different" campaign, which lasted from 1997 to 2002, set the tone for Apple's marketing ever since. John Lennon, Gandhi, Picasso, Muhammad Ali, Einstein... In Apple's "Think Different" advertisement, a series of iconic faces pay tribute to those who push the world forward, in stark contrast to IBM, which at that time had "Think" as its motto, and vividly displayed Apple's "subversive" image.
>> Spring Festival Advertisement: Behind Every Story The Care for the "People" Themselves
Let the cold technology have a humanistic temperature, and realize the combination of art and technology, this value is reflected in Apple's various marketing activities. In the Chinese market, the most representative is the Spring Festival marketing camppaign. By focusing on people, people's creativity, people's emotions, and people's beauty, we show the humanistic value of the Apple brand.
Since 2015, Apple has begun to produce Chinese New Year advertisements, and the strong emotional outpouring of "Made in the New Year", "Congratulations" and "Old Records" is touching. Since 2018, trying to use the iPhone to shoot short films, "Three Minutes", "A Bucket", "Daughter" has aroused heated discussion among the whole people.
Chen Kexin used the iPhone X to shoot the short film "Three Minutes", which tells the story of a train conductor who can't accompany his children due to work every Spring Festival, and reunites with his children for a short 3-minute New Year reunion on the platform. A high-quality touching story is the starting point of Apple's advertising film marketing, there is no product preaching, but the transmission of brand value and humanistic care.
>> celebrity marketing: no spokespersons, but "spokespeople" everywhere.
As we all know, in the mobile phone market competition is extremely fierce, entertainment marketing is popular today, Apple insists on not signing a spokesperson, but this does not mean that Apple gave up the celebrity strategy, but really to dig out the celebrities who agree with Apple's values and products.
Apple started the Behind the Mac series of videos in August 2018 and shared various videos to show how people use their Mac computers. One idea, one of them, was to use a black-and-white slideshow of MacBook celebrities. The photos all came from the footage found, and the ad lasted just over a minute, with images of more than a dozen prominent musicians, activists, artists, scientists and industry leaders flashing on the screen.
Notable faces include: American rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar, feminist and activist Gloria Stein, American singer Billie Elish, Game of Thrones actress Jonathan van Ness, Mrs. Gaga, female professional tennis player Serena Williams, drag queen Rupaul, founder of the Metoo movement Tarana Burke, filmmaker Spike Lee, well-known nighttime talk show host Stephen Colbert, American singer-songwriter Farrell Williams, Takashi Murakami, Solangi Knowles, Jane Goodall, Donald Glover Iris Apfeel. If these people rely on Apple products, why don't others?
>> outdoor advertising: user co-creation Let every user become the protagonist of creation
One of the changes brought about by the iPhone is that it has changed photography from an interest and technology to a part of daily life, and everyone can be a mobile phone photographer.
Apple has launched an outdoor advertising market called "Shot on iPhone" around the world, working with mobile photography enthusiasts around the world. In major cities around the world, you'll find huge, bright, impressive pictures with "Shoot with iPhone" and the names of the people who took them. This series of ideas culminated in the Grand Prix in the outdoor section of the 2016 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
In order to emphasize the iPhone 7 night shooting function, Apple also held a "One Nignt on Earth" marketing campaign, artists from various places completed the creation on the night of November 5, 2016, such as the neon lights on the streets of Shanghai, the active volcano in Java, Indonesia, the Arctic Cave in Iceland, the nightclub in Johannesburg, etc. This batch of mobile photography works also landed on outdoor billboards in 25 countries and regions around the world.
>> Film Marketing: Get free implants with product power to ensure brand image is maintained
Director Ryan Johnson has revealed two points of information, first, Apple allows you to use the iPhone in movies, but the voiceover is that Apple will not pay for it; second, the use must comply with its own rules, can not let the bad guys use the iPhone.
In the 1990s, when Jon Holtzman was Apple's head of marketing, many filmmakers wanted to use Apple products as movie props, but often couldn't get the latest products. Holzman successfully persuaded Apple management to list filmmakers, along with the media and relatives of employees, as a priority for Apple products. Since then, Apple products, especially the latest ones, have begun to appear in large numbers of Hollywood movies for free.
In 1996, Apple agreed to work with the production company of the first Mission Impossible film, which Holtzman said "saved nearly $500,000 in production costs and was given a commercial directed by Brian de Palmer and starring Tom Cruise." In 2011's Mission Impossible 4, the Apple series appeared in the movie for more than 8 minutes, and market research firm Smallwood estimated that the appearances of these scenes were worth $23 million.
>> retail store experience: make the store into a "work of art" Users personally feel the charm of the product
Apple's biggest "advertising investment" is actually in the offline physical store. Jobs once said, "Unless there's a way to communicate our ideas to customers in the store, we're doomed." So, Jobs decided to do his own retail store. However, the retail industry is difficult to operate, and the plan is not optimistic about the board and the outside world, but Jobs's carefully prepared retail store has achieved unprecedented success as soon as it was launched.
Located in the most expensive part of the city, the Apple Experience Store is itself an invisible advertisement. Moreover, the Apple Experience Store can always be evocative, from the glass staircase to each service staff, which reflects the unique charm of Apple. Here, consumers can not only experience the latest products, but also get a comfortable service experience, so that every user who walks out of the Apple Experience Store may become Apple's "volunteer" promoter.
Customers can comfortably experience the store, try out various products, and feel free to use the products displayed in the store. It is not so much a store as it is a club, and customers do not feel any sense of oppression and have little commercial atmosphere.