The world of branding moves fast. No sooner have we made one mistake, we rush off to make another. That’s the nature of the beast. We don’t ever go back to wonder how things might have been done differently. There is always a new mistake to make and we want to be the ones to make it.
Take the Apple campaign, the one that features two men, one Apple, one PC. This is a very odd piece of marketing. It warms the heart of every Apple owner. But, really, did they need encouragement? If ever there were a group of people who qualified as consumer devotees, Apple buyers are it.
So, if the ads are not directed at Apple owners, then who? Surely not non-Apple owners. The ad makes fun of non-Apple owners. It declares them clueless morons, incapable of creativity, obsessed with work, men in grey flannel suits. What are chances that making fun of this group is going to recruit them? Surely, Apple has done the opposite of what they intend.
Apple has a problem. They live in a dichotomous universe. There is a small group of loyalists. And a much larger group of those who don’t really care. But they weren’t content with that. Thanks to the advice of TBWA\Chiat\Day, I guess, they found a way to turn their non loyalists into anti-loyalists.
Um, good work, fellas. Self congratulation is a dangerous thing…and really bad marketing.
References
For an example of the Apple vs. PC ad campaign, go here.
Perhaps they are doing something like Mini? Advertising to their existing customers who would then feel even better about being their customers, and so advocate Apple, reaching far more people than that ad would?
Err, what evidence is there that it’s not working? The ads “make fun” of PC users in a spirited but warm-hearted and funny way. A few viewers might feel put off, I guess, but I would guess that most PCers, to the extent they care or are paying attention, 1) find the ads entertaining, 2) think Hey, maybe Apples do have some features that PCs lack that would be nice to have, 3) think subconsciously, Apple is cooler-younger-fresher, therefore I’d be cooler-younger-fresher if I had one. And if viewers disagree about the merits of Apple vs. PC, most probably nonetheless find cute or at least aren’t ~bothered by~ Apple’s chutzpah. Don’t you think?
Personally, as a Mac owner I find the ads infuriating. I don’t want to be that obnoxious Mac guy who thinks they’re so cool because they own a computer with 5/6 of an Apple on it. On the other hand, when I talk to PC people about it, they all seem to say they can relate to the problems the Mac guy has: Freezing, viruses, complicated setups.
By the way, have you read the Slate article on the campaign (http://www.slate.com/id/2143810/) or seen the VH1 Best Week Ever spoof videos? (http://youtube.com/watch?v=KBSrRYe8-68) Both are really good.
Just a note everyone, to make those links work you’re going to need to take the trailing close parentheses off . . .
Hmmm. As a longtime PC user I can honestly say I wasn’t offended by the ads. I’ve always aspired to be an Apple user and thought Macs were much, much cooler, but I just haven’t made the leap. Of the two, the Mac user group is the one I’d prefer to identify with, so in that sense I don’t find the campaign ineffective. I won’t assume that PC users have their identities so tied up in their PCs that they aren’t able to “think different” or would feel personally insulted.
Hmmm. As a longtime PC user I can honestly say I wasn’t offended by the ads. I’ve always aspired to be an Apple user and thought Macs were much, much cooler, but I just haven’t made the leap. Of the two, the Mac user group is the one I’d prefer to identify with, so in that sense I don’t find the campaign ineffective. I won’t assume that PC users have their identities so tied up in their PCs that they aren’t able to “think different” or would feel personally insulted.
Seth Godin posted something pertinent to this discussion a little while ago, in which he suggested that the purpose of marketing is “… not to sell something to person A. Instead, at least right now, it’s to get person A to encourage person B to buy/do something.”
In that light, reinforcing the smugness of Apple users makes them more likely to encourage others to join the cult.
Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/07/not_the_first_s.html
The message I get from them is that Apple is hip, young, energetic, and cool. Being an Apple user is an affective experience: you feel special, part of a club, when you use Apple products. On the other hand, using Microsoft(really, what is PC? he’s not running Linux) makes you part of a large mediocre herd.
Every Mac user I know is passionate about their machine. How many people are passionate about their beige box?
Ken said: “In that light, reinforcing the smugness of Apple users makes them more likely to encourage others to join the cult.”
But one of the essential aspects of a cult, and particularly true of the Apple-cultists I know, is that a cult is exclusive. Too many people buy Macs and then the warm, inner glow from being in a clever minority disappears. I don’t think many Mac users would ever be trying to encourage others to join the cult, no matter how good was Apple’s advertising, since being popular would undermine their self-esteeem.
Thanks, Grant. I had the same reaction when I first saw it. Clearly, with the success of the iPod, there’s an opportunity for Apple to capture a whole segment of people who are PC-agnostic. (There probably are some PC true believers, too, but most of us are not passionately attached to Windows, and would listen to an Apple pitch.)
By playing the smug card, they may have pleased their fanatical user base, but turned off a lot more of us who might have bought an Apple. Hard to look at that ad and say “This brand is for someone like me.”
Interesting point, especially considering Mac users constitute less than 4% of the market. Perhaps they’re trying to recruit users by appealing to arrogance instead of the usual Apple approach via vanity, intelligence, sensuality or functionality.
I think Apple is the only system that really does get the work done, and while the up-front costs are certainly higher, the value saved in gained productivity added to the sheer pleasure of using an elegant interface and exquisite machinery more than makes up for the loss.
My suggestion? Get back to emphasizing “capital-d” DESIGN but balance it with a punchy appeal to long-view logic.
Maybe it works like this … The Mac guy is so smug that he makes PC users like me doubt my own convictions. Whilst I was happy with my purchase of my PC, I was never as smug as he is. If he is that convinced that Macs are the best then maybe just maybe there is something in this Mac thing after all. Next time I’ll check them out just to see what all the fuss is about.
The ad makes fun of non-Apple owners. It declares them clueless morons, incapable of creativity, obsessed with work, men in grey flannel suits.
I don’t think the ads do that at all. I think they’re playing on frustrations that PC owners experience more than trying to portray the owners themselves. I think the sales message is “are you someone who buys a staid, difficult machine, or are you someone who buys something hipper and quicker?” And that doesn’t seem to me to be a slap, in the way that you read it.
I recently rejoined the Apple cult (I was one of the original Mac owners, way back when) and am thrilled to be back in the fold. But, I do find the whole “we’re way cooler than anybody else” ‘tude a bit too precious sometimes.
Yet, (I’ve not seen the commercial) could it be that Apple is actually having a bit of fun at its own expense as well?
Further, if the viewer is truly staid and clueless and offended – they’d never buy an Apple anyway.
I think I’ll go hug my iMac now 😉
I started out with the Apple II, had a string of the orginal clamshell Macs back in the 80’s, and then worked through the product line up to the LC or so. I only switched in the late 90’s, but have been buying PCs since then, using Macs only now and then.
What’s odd is that the claims of substantial difference and superiority in multiple dimensions rang true in the 80’s and early 90’s for me — there was a real difference between the GUI of the Mac OS and the interface of DOS and early Windows. Using a Mac and using a PC had entirely different logics.
While I know Mac loyalists would disagree, my feeling is that the difference between the Mac and PC lines today is largely about style, not substance.
Which is why these ads, imho, pretty accurately express what the Mac product is about. Yes, they’re smug — but isn’t fashion always smug?
Wow! Once again, my perception is very different. The guys in the ad aren’t the CUSTOMERS–they’re personifications of the MACHINES. Which one would be more fun to hang out with? The idea is that lots of users of PCs actually identify themselves more as the kind of people who would be friends with the Mac-avatar, and so might be induced to switch in order to better line up their consumption with their self-conception.
Note also that the PC-avatar is humble and well-meaning. I actually think this non-demonization of the PC is a step away from moral smugness for Apple. Remember the 1984 and lemming ads?
As a former PC user the ads worked on me. It converted me. After being bombarded with them during the NBA playoff i went out and purchased a MacBook. That ad talks directly to every PC user. I travel alot and i am noticing so many Mac in the airport. But that could be because i have one now.
Steve said what I was thinking. Listen to the commercial. It says “I am a Mac. I am a PC.” They clearly don’t say “I am a mac user.” They aren’t supposed to represent the users, they are representing the products! It is a pretty simple concept, so I am amazed by how you misread it so badly. Grant, perhaps you should actually Watch and Listen to the commercials before you declare them as “really bad marketing.”
I guess there is some smugness in the delivery, but it actually works pretty well. They aren’t my favorite Apple spots, but unlike you, I see them as clearly targeting the non-Apple user (not me, an apple loyalist).
Thanks to everyone for their intelligent and passionate comments. I think it will not do to say that the ad referred to machines and not consumers. I mean, really, you cannot personify the machine without personifying the owner. Meanings are labile, and they will leap. And of course they do leap because marketing does not work (i.e., manufacture meanings) unless they leap. Thanks again. Best, Grant
I own a PC, and the commercials made me wish I had a Mac. But I still own a PC.
As a PC-user, I wasn’t at all offended by the ads. I thought it was cute, but didn’t find it particularly persuasive — but that’s because all my experiences with Macs (in university computer labs, with my friends’ and family’s computers, etc.) have been pretty uniformly negative. So that doesn’t really speak to their effectiveness as advertising. I think it probably works, since it plays into Apple’s broader advertising pitch (roughly: “you can be hip like me if you get an Apple”).
The thing I find odd is that Apple’s design aesthetic — with everything in blacks and whites and chrome, and a uniform succession of white bulbs and boxes with gently rounded corners — is an aesthetic that screams 1950’s futurism and people going about in unisex Dr. Evil suits.
But they’ve managed to make their advertising image the scruffy young man up there.
Whereas PCs, with their unkempt tangle of wires, their mismatched monitors and tower cases and keyboards, their sloppy innards, and their lint-filled fans, somehow get pegged as the man in the grey flannel suit.
I’ve always thought that seemed completely backwards, ever since the first “Think Different” ad I saw back in (I think) the late 90’s. There’s what seems (to me) to be this screaming dissonance between their product design and their image. And yet it works for them! How did they pull it off?
Not so fast, Grant! It is true that user identity is caught up with product identity, but the whole point of these ads is to create identity dissonance among some of the PC users–“I’m not really the kind of person who hangs out with ineffectual dorks.”
The ads personify the MACHINES and then rely on the identification mechanism you posit to cause PC USERS to say “That doesn’t belong with me!” Unlike the old lemming ad, the PC user isn’t being attacked–he’s being flattered implicitly by being told “You’re too good for this crap.”
Hi,
As a long-time user of PCs and PC-laptops, I think that Macs are really aspirational. I want one. I don’t have one because my organization has standardized IT and provides only PC-based systems.
However, one of the reasons that Macs are cool is because so few people have them – they are designed to stand out and they do.
If all the guys in the neighbouring cubes had Macs or iBooks, I wonder how cool and aspirational they would be.
So the marketing challenge for Apple, given their brand image, is how do they capture the mainstream market without losing the brand attributes which make them different and attractive?
Reynold
I think it will not do to say that the ad referred to machines and not consumers. I mean, really, you cannot personify the machine without personifying the owner. Meanings are labile, and they will leap. And of course they do leap because marketing does not work (i.e., manufacture meanings) unless they leap.
This seems like a place where your anthropology needs leavening from your economics. Okay, let’s grant that some of the characterization of the machines is meant to rub off on the machine owner. For a lot of people (yourself) that’s a turn-off. But is Apple trying to convert everyone? Or are they selling to the margin? The people who are already intrigued by the Apple style, and are growing increasingly tired of the Microsoft/PC hassles.
Now, it may not be worthwhile to aggravate the rest of the PC-owner public. But maybe it is. Is it impossible to say that Apple hasn’t done well by cultivating a bit of us-versus-them mentality? Isn’t that brand loyalty that plenty of other companies would die to have?
And I say this as someone who long ago adopted a stringent anti-Apple position, but who’s been softening ever since.
I generally agree with the rest of the sentiment in the comments section here.
It seems a little simplistic to generalize about an entire ad campaign working (or not) without any data to back it up, other than ones own observations. From an anthropological perspective, I can understand the impulse to rate somethings significance based on a select number of indivitual sources (ie opinions/reactions). But based soley on my own, both on and off of this comment board, the opposite of what you’re saying seems to be true. You might need a bigger research pool.
As a marketeer, my experience has been that Apples campaign has been both a success virally, commerically, and in terms of the responce it has evoked from those who do disagree or disapprove (though the do indeed seem to be in the minority – PC user or Mac users alike).
Apple is advertising the integration of life-stuff (not just business) into their products. If anything is clear, it is that this is the way things are headed. Machines are no longer just data tools – they are portals to the world, and the device that assists us in shaping our identities.
People find meaning in varied ways. The more Apple enables meaning-making, the more relevance it will have in the coming years. So why not market it?
Teenagers.
Not everyone identifies with one personification or the other yet; some are still trying to define who they are, and thus which guy in the ad they are, by what they decide to do and what they decide to buy. So if one is made fun of, who cares? That guy’s not me.
My younger brother is a recent college graduate. As far as I have observed, everyone he knows has an iBook which their parents bought for them when they went off to school. We got him one for graduation, instead of another PC, so that his friends would be able to help him use it. This isn’t a cross section of the 18-24 market, of course; I’m only looking at one of the smaller and more expensive private liberal arts schools. But less and less patience and affluence is required to bring that choice to all the teens on MySpace.
I think the point of this ad is not to make fun of PC users (it might, but oh well), but to take that choice and transform it from something about latte-sipping artist types who can’t understand why you would ever use such an inferior platform to something framed in the language and cultural identifiers that these kids have.
Does it work? Not perfectly, maybe. But it does accomplish something, and not by accident. Someone must have given some thought to what was wrong with the Ellen Feiss spot.
the characters are not only personifications of the machines but also represent the intended consumer, which is true to fact, Microsoft relies on the rigidity of spreadsheets and the corporate lifestyle while Apple markets to a younger more alternative audience, it doesn’t mean you must be one or the other, but that it who they intend to sell to