This Apple Advertising Fiasco Demonstrates the Value of Branding…
A Branding Decision so Catastrophic it Boggles My Mind
Do you remember when you first encountered an Apple product?
I remember mine.
I was in 3rd grade, and they had just added a bunch of those round, colorful see-through Apple computers to the Happy Valley Elementary School computer lab.
It’s where I learned to type, so as a digital marketing freelance copywriter, I owe a lot to those computers!
Well, I don’t know if you heard, but Apple recently showed its worst ad ever.
Translation: their marketing department royally F#@*ed UP
And rather than spoil anything, I’ll let you watch it for yourself:
UPDATE: The ad was SO horrendous that I cannot find the original online. This video has two ads: apples original “crush” ad, and Samsungs response.
So the point they WANTED to make was: “Look how much technology fits in the IPad now!”
But honestly… it doesn’t matter what they hoped to communicate.
In marketing, there are no brownie points for trying or good intentions!
In the same way that the customer determines the value of what you sell (learn more here)…
The customer also determines the messaging of your advertisements.
(For communication theory nerds out there, this is the perlocution of the utterance)
So ask yourself: what did you feel while watching it? What were you thinking?
There is a good chance you felt/thought what most people felt:
“Look at all those instruments…
Paint…
Clothing…
Sketching…
Statues…
Cameras…
Lighting…
These marvels of human creativity…
Signs of life and culture…
OBLITERATED…
By a cold, steel, huge, invincible machine…
To be replaced by “the future”…
Lifeless, technology lacking humanity and personality”
The ad is SOUL CRUSHING (pun intended).
And while communicating “Our products will crush your creative soul” is bad enough, let’s learn some more about branding before we discover why this ad was particularly harmful…
Everyone Needs a Brand
Before They Begin Marketing
“What is a Brand Anyway?”
When people think of “branding” most think of just the logo of a company.
And while a logo is referred to as “the brand”, it is a symbol/graphic image used to represent the brand. The logo is not the brand itself.
The “brand” is the customer-facing identity of a business.
It’s the personality, feelings, and ideas that come into a customer’s mind when they interact with your business or use your products or services.
In order to be effective, your branding needs to match reality.To use a random, made-up example: if your ice cream makes people happy, then your happy branding makes sense. If it gives them food poisoning, then happy branding does not make sense.
In other words, a good brand is consistent with your promised benefits and unique sales proposition (learn about a USP here).
And the “consistency” part is critical. Your brand image and message needs to stay the same across all channels and touchpoints throughout the customer journey (learn more about a touchpoints and the customer journey here).
Why is a brand important?
Because good, consistent branding helps sales:
A clear brand removes confusion (and confusion is the DEATH of sales… I’ll elaborate in a future blog post)
The more customers interact with a brand, the more familiar it becomes to them.
And familiarity breeds trust and loyalty, both of which impact their decision-making when it comes time to purchase.
But notice that I didn’t say “Branding IS marketing”; branding is not the same as advertising, communicating, offering, marketing, etc.
But it is one essential step in marketing:
Your brand identity determines what kind of offers you make…
Your brand message explicitly states what you offer…
Your brand imagery illustrates what you offer…
In summary, branding dictates what your marketing message is and how you communicate it.
Which means that to market and advertise before you have established your brand is crazy!
Ance once “branding” is properly defined, it’s importance for your business becomes clear. My tabletop games clients probably understand this already. But it applies to healthcare too!
In summary, a brand is not a complicated ad-agency buzzword. It is reinterpreting your business in a way that customers understand and consistently communicating it to help you reach your professional goals.
And every business can benefit from that!
What are the essential pieces of a brand identity?
Vision: how you hope to improve the world, should everything go according to plan
Mission: the steps you will take to accomplish that vision
Promises: the way you will go about executing the mission
Story: how and why you became who you are
Tone: the feelings your brand creates
Values: the beliefs your brand holds most dear
Colors, Fonts, and Art Design: the aesthetics of your marketing material
Images: selecting the visuals you want your brand to be associated with
Associations: Partners whose authority and credibility you want to borrow for your brand
The Cost of Apple’s Branding Mistake…
To understand Apple’s mistake, you need to understand what therir brand is.
The above video is Apples famous “breaking through the glass” 1984 Superbowl ad.
Go ahead and watch it.
Finished?
Notice anything?
The messaging of the two ads could not be more different.
At the dawn of the computer age, every computer was gray, corporate, and professional. They were only for efficient work and corporate business.
Accounting. Spreadsheets. Data. Robot stuff.
But then Apple came along…
(you can already tell this is an AMAZING brand story!)
… offering vibrant, colored, smaller Macintosh Computers.
A personal computer for people to use at home.
They were so simple and intuitive that anyone could use them.
And eventually shifted to focus on computers for creatives.
This was their brand. And their 1984 ad is what got all that started.
And it was this brand… a brand for PEOPLE… that turned them into the computing and tech juggernaut they are today.
So what went wrong?
The Apple advertisers forgot, and then abandoned, its brand identity.
They got so fixated on the steamlined, small ipad size…
And so obsessed with how much computer power it had…
That they couldn’t see that the ad abandoned everything that made Apple special.
It was so bad that Samsung made a beautiful ad in response to the Apple ad, and immediately seized some of Apple’s customer base:
If your competitor is not only able to mock your ad…
But also STEAL your cherished, hard-won brand in the process…
Then your ad has royally f%&#$-up.
In summary, your brand is the role you play in your customer’s life.
It is the personality that they experience whenever they interact with you and your products/services.
When honest and consistent, it is the bedrock of your markeitng strategy…
And a powerful tool to boost sales.
So before you do any markeitng, define and stick to your branding.
Because if you don’t, you could easily alienate the very customers you want to attract, all while genuinely trying to meet their needs.
