Sunday 8 December 2013

Steve Jobs and the brand that changed the world

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With Apple, Steve Jobs created the archetypal emotional brand – one that captures our imaginations, inspires our devotion, transforms the way we live, and creates connections that transcend commerce.
“Your customers dream of a happier and better life,” Jobs once said. “Don’t move products. Enrich lives.”
 
So how did he so triumphantly do that, simultaneously creating one of the most successful brands in the world? Innovative product design was certainly part of it. “Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want’. But that’s not my approach,” Jobs said. “Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think it was Henry Ford who once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, a faster horse.’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
 
Apple’s founding ethos was that of power to the people through technology, and its products have always been designed around people. “We did iTunes because we all love music,” Jobs said. “Then we all wanted to carry our whole music libraries around with us. The team worked really hard, and the reason they worked so hard is because we all wanted one. It’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it too.”
From the beginning, Apple’s unique visual and verbal vocabulary was expressed in its product design and advertising. “I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box,” Jobs said. “A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back too. The aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
 
Yet even more than the products, Apple is defined by a particular way of thinking, a certain set of values, and an unmistakeable human touch that pervades everything the company does. Jobs recognised that a brand is more than a logo; that a brand is what connects a business with the hearts and minds of consumers. He knew that his customers needed to feel a certain way when they picked up an Apple product, entered an Apple store, or visited the Apple website. He understood that a brand should envelop the entire business strategy and positively influence all employees.
“Our DNA is as a consumer company – for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. Our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience,” he said. “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life, and life is brief.”
 
When Jobs stepped down as Apple’s CEO shortly before his death in 2011 at the age of fifty-six, he said: “I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it.”
For Steve Jobs, branding was never an external secondary objective; it was embedded deeply within everything he did. Products have limited life cycles, but brands – if managed well – last forever. Apple is right up there with those that will do just that.

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