Over the last four decades the technological development has been rapid and continuous. From a time when personal computers was almost unthinkable till today where technology like personal computers, smartphones, tablets etc., has become an irreplaceable part of many people’s everyday life. Apple Inc., though only one of many, has been a part of the development since
1976. Today Apple is however no longer only a part of the development, but Apple has managed to work, and perhaps even to innovate, through an intense competitive market and changing times to become the most valuable brand today.
How has Apple managed to gain so much success? Of course several diverse factors can help to account for the success. We find all the aspects of business success very interesting. However, this project looks into the branding of Apple in order to investigate the success of Apple throughout a global financial crisis during the late 2000s.
To get a better understanding of Apple’s branding and marketing strategies we have conducted a discourse analysis of the first iPad presentation from 2010. By conducting the discourse analysis we have gained insight into how Apple uses product presentations as a part of their marketing and branding strategies. For the discourse analysis we use James Paul Gee’s theoretical approach. Our hypothesis is that the Discourse Analysis can show how Apple uses a specific approach for their marketing strategy and this approach can be explained by the Golden Circle theory and the Blue Ocean Strategy.
Apple is today the most valuable brand in the world. We, through our research, found that becoming the most valuable brand in the world is not something that happens overnight and by implementing different strategies. It all boils down to the product and people buying the product.
Strategies can of course point you in the right direction, but when all comes to all it is not possible to foresee success, but a success can only be measured in retrospect.
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Frontpage ................................................................................................................................ 1
Abstract ................................................................................................................................... 2
List of Content ......................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 4
Motivation ................................................................................................................................ 4
Abbreviations and definitions of concepts ................................................................................ 5
Problem area........................................................................................................................... 7
Problem definition ................................................................................................................... 9
Research questions ............................................................................................................. 9
Delimitation .......................................................................................................................... 9
Project design ....................................................................................................................... 11
Chapter Introduction .............................................................................................................. 12
Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 14
Choice of theory .................................................................................................................... 14
Primary data .......................................................................................................................... 16
Interviews summary .............................................................................................................. 20
Secondary data ..................................................................................................................... 21
Quantitative data ................................................................................................................... 25
Background ........................................................................................................................... 31
Theories ................................................................................................................................ 35
Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 54
Discourse Analysis ................................................................................................................ 64
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 75
Discussion ............................................................................................................................. 78
Perspective ........................................................................................................................... 79
Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 81
Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................................ 85
Appendix 2 ............................................................................................................................ 91
Appendix 3 ............................................................................................................................ 97
Appendix 4 .......................................................................................................................... 101
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The project looks into the marketing strategies of Apple. We investigate how Apple has succeeded in becoming the world’s most valuable brand and which marketing strategies they have employed in order to gain this lucrative position.
The project is interdisciplinary between sociology and economics.
During the last decade the world has undergone a severe financial crisis. The recession has by experts been named the worst financial crisis since the great depression during the 1930s.
(Sorkin, 2009 p.31) A significant number of companies worldwide have succumbed, and no markets have been left untouched. However some companies haven’t suffered during the late
2000s crisis, but have managed to work through the continuing financial rigors. One of these companies is Apple Inc.
Our curiosity was awakened when we discovered that Apple has not only managed to get through the crisis without succumbing, but Apple has at the same time managed to increase its sales and surplus. How can this be when the overall technology market has suffered severely during the crisis? But Apple continues and continues to grow? Apple products are not cheap products, so it could not just be consumers choosing cheaper products forced by the crisis. What could then be the reason why consumers choose Apple products to such a degree that Apple today is the world's most valuable company? You do not see that many commercials from Apple.
However every time Apple launches a new product, or a sequel to a previous model, the world media sits on the front row enthusiastically broadcasting reports to keen awaiting consumers all over the world. Which other companies gets news coverage when introducing a new phone or tablet? What entails these tendencies?
These thoughts have been the stepping stone to our further investigation.
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In this section we will define the different concepts and abbreviations used throughout the project.
Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS): Developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne addresses the problems of competition within a regular market, and aims at moving a company / product to a market of its own thus eliminating competition. BOS divides the market into two different markets: Namely a blue ocean / market which is the unknown market space where competition is an irrelevant factor in conducting business, and a red ocean / market which is the known market space where companies compete and try to outperform each other. The Blue Ocean Strategy will be explained further in the project.
Branding: The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers”. (ILO, May 2012)
In reality, branding is therefore not about luring consumers to choose you over your competition but making it clear to your target segment that you are the only one that provides a solution to their problem or need. A good brand will clearly deliver the message of the product whilst confirming the company’s credibility. At the same time there has to be an emotional connection motivating the buyer to purchase the product and thereby creating user loyalty.
Every company has a brand profile, whether they like it or not. During recent years there has been a shift in how companies work with their brand. It has changed from a classical business sense where customers were left by themselves to make up their mind about the company unlike today where actively working with the brand is more popular and will leave the active company with two advantages (Nilson, 2000 p.9)
If the company has a good understanding of how to brand, it will first of all give them a financial benefit and secondly and perhaps more important, if we are to use Apple as an example, it gives the employees a sense of purpose. A good brand, that the employees can be proud of, will notably have a positive effect on the morale in the whole organization. A good example of this is
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the Virgin group with founder Richard Branson in the spotlight delivering clear messages of the company’s purpose boosting the entire company. Similar effects took places in the 90’s with
Microsoft and owner Bill Gates but since then Apple has become the big player in the competitive market of computers and mobile devices with this ‘inside out’ branding.
‘Inside out’ is actually where proper branding starts. The employees are the face of the company and only by synchronizing the brand personality, values and corporate culture will the picture of the company be coherent. Living in a commercial infrastructure we are daily exposed to around
1.000-2.000 commercial messages every day, and during our trip to the supermarket we exposed to four to eight times more messages and brands than we were just twenty years ago (Nilson,
2000 p. 7). This makes it even more important for your brand to be not only short, sweet and to the point but also stating clear enough that it will be recognizable in the hoard of items.
A brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.
Business strategy - Long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal or set of objectives (ILO, May 2012.). Business goals can both relate to financial, marketing, sales and other goals.
Discourse - Discourse can be explained differently. We have worked with James Paul Gee’s approach to discourse. Gee works with language-in-use and situated language. Thus in this project discourse is related to different uses and understandings of language.
Flesch-Kincaid - Can be used as an analytical tool for readability of a text. There are two tests, the Flesch Reading Ease , and the Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level .
Marketing message: The message which companies aim at communicating to the market.
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Coca-Cola, Nike, Google, Microsoft, Disney, MTV and McDonalds are all part of an exclusive club consisting of the biggest and most valuable brands in the whole world. This means that no matter where you go almost all people will know these names and what they do. During the last century Apple has become a member of this club and made it to the top of the list. But how?
The “Think different” advertising slogan introduced by former CEO Steve Jobs in 1997 was to reflect Apple’s identity and indeed the identity of the products. Apple’s 30-year history is full of highs and lows, but as the world has undergone a global financial crisis during the late 2000s,
Apple has now for the fourth year in a row been named, with a brand value of $15.3 billion (ILO,
May 2011), the most valuable brand in the world on Fortunes list of the 50 most valuable brands
/ companies in the world (Sweney, 2011 p. 2).
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, after he had been “kicked” out of the company in
1985, Apple was in a serious crisis and many didn’t expect them to survive much longer. It was in the mid 1990s things really started to look bad for Apple, and the CEO of the Dell, Kevin
Rollins, commented: “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” (ILO, May
2012.). Jobs returned with a vision of differentiating Apple products from competitive brands.
His idea was that Apple products should be different both in design and performance. Less technology and more sociology was the agenda. The goal for Apple was to find a new market and gain loyalty among customers, by creating a need and filling a technology-void with new products.
We believe that Apple has discovered together with many of the other of the biggest brands in the world, that people in postmodern societies of today no longer identify themselves with what they do for a living as much as they identify themselves with what they consume. It is no longer the traditional and local communities, like social class and the church, that give people a feeling of a social affiliation and therefore is consumption and lifestyle such a big part of social identity
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(Rasborg 1998, p.63) In other words, by owning a Apple product an individual can be part of a certain group and signal to the world who he/she is and who they want to be. When people buy an Apple product they do not only pay for the product itself but also for the symbolic meaning the product has as a building block to a certain identity and lifestyle.
Today, 15 years after Apple was close to shutting down, it has become the most valuable brand and company in the world (Sweney, 2011 p. 3 - 4) The value of the Apple share has increased 25 times from $7.18 at the beginning of 2003 to $177.98 in 2008 per share (ILO, May 2012). Before the late 2000s financial crisis the stock market capitalisation of Apple was $169 billion. The stock value continued to increase during the financial crisis and had its first peek in 2010 when the total capitalisation hit $210 billion. As of 2011 Apple had a turnover of $108.2 billion, and the profit of the last quarter of 2011 hit $13.1 billion. Apple’s profit alone was in the first quarter of 2011 15% higher than another member of the exclusive club of the world’s most valuable brands total turnover namely Google (ILO, May 2012).
Apple has succeeded in creating exceptional products and product combinations. However we believe that the entire success cannot be ascribed to the products alone. Our hypothesis is that they have combined innovative product creation with innovative marketing strategies and by doing so they have convinced people that they have a need for Apple products. Confident of their own products Apple lets the world press do much of their advertising for them. As the only company in the world a product launch has press coverage from all over the world ensuring
Apple international coverage and exposure. It not only boost sales but it enhances brand value as well. What we would like to discover is what these marketing strategies are and how Apple have used the strategies and especially how they have used these products presentations as a part of
Apple’s marketing. Therefore we have created the following problem definition:
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How did the iPad and its marketing message help Apple to become the most valuable brand in the world?
To answer our problem definition in the best way possible, we have phrased a set of research questions which will help us to find applicable answers and to get an optimal overview of the project. Moreover the research questions will work as a guideline through the project and will help us to create a flow throughout the context.
● How has Apple developed as a company through time?
● How has the sale of the iPad helped Apple in increasing their value?
● Which strategies has Apple used in relation to the iPad and how do they work?
● How has Apple used product presentations to convince customers to buy their products?
As mentioned in the problem area and problem definition we only wish to analyze the presentation and product launch of the first iPad. We however acknowledge that Apple Inc. has more products than just the iPad. The presentation of the iPad will be employed as a case study of which we will come to a general assumption of the marketing by Apple Inc.
Apple products are traded globally. Throughout this project we will however not look into cultural and linguistic differences between the different countries and regions, and how this may affect how Apple Inc. conducts marketing in a specific country and/or region.
It is not our intention to figure out how Apple Inc., and other companies for that matter, can increase sales or implement a certain strategy, but we wish to discover if the success, which
Apple has had in the late 2000s, can be ascribed to a different approach to branding, thus we will not look into the economic aspects of Apple’s success.
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We mention in our problem area that one of the changes Apple has undergone recently is the managerial change as Tim Cook has taken over as CEO. It has however not been possible to find significant data to confirm or disconfirm if the change has had an impact on the value of Apple.
It has not been possible to organize an interview with someone inside Apple nor to collect data from inside the company, hence the project will be solemnly external. In order to get qualified guesses towards which branding strategies Apple might be using we want to conduct interviews with communication and business advisors, who can point in the direction of how Apple conducts branding. However these interviews will remain as qualified guesses with no inside knowledge.
The main part of the literature available about Apple is well-disposed towards Apple. It has not been possible to find one consistent critical source, which we have been able to use throughout the project. On the other hand this has entailed that we have had to do our own reflections towards the literature.
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In this paragraph we will explain the overall design of the project and introduce the different chapters within this project.
Figure 1.1
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Explanation of project design:
Our project is designed in the way that we started out by narrowing down our problem area to a problem definition. From our problem definition we formulated a set of research questions, which would help us to be able to answer the problem definition.
To each set of questions we conducted different quantitative and qualitative data, which we analyzed by using different methods and theories.
From our analysis we could formulate a conclusion that answered our problem definition. In the last part of the project we have made a discussion of the answers and new questions we have reached during our project work.
We would like to introduce every chapter within the project to make it coherent and to obtain an optimal overview of the project.
Chapter 1: Introduction and problem
This chapter consists of our motivation to investigate this area plus our problem definition. The research questions will be mentioned as well as the limitations of the project.
Chapter 2: Project design
Within this chapter the design and approach of our project will be explained.
Chapter 3 : Methodology
In this chapter we will clarify how we have organized our investigation which both includes quantitative and qualitative data. Furthermore we will explain our choice of theories, our selection of semi-structured interviews and the reflections upon these.
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Chapter 4: Background
To maintain a greater understanding of Apple Inc. we will account for the background of Apple throughout this chapter.
Chapter 5: Theories
This chapter will explain the theory of the Discourse Analysis, and our secondary theories which is the Blue Ocean Strategy and the Golden Circle Theory.
Chapter 6: Analysis
This chapter consists of our analysis, which is divided into three parts. First we will combine the two theories, the Blue Ocean Strategy and the Golden Circle Theory, with the iPad presentation.
Secondly we will conduct our discourse analysis. Thirdly we will combine our analysis.
Chapter 7: Discussion, perspective and conclusion
This chapter consists of a discussion and a perspective followed by a conclusion of the overall project.
Chapter 8: Bibliography and appendix
This chapter consists of our bibliography and appendix 1, 2, 3 and 4.
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In this paragraph we are going to explain the different methodological considerations we have reflected upon during the preparation of this project. We will go through our approach and our chosen methods. We will account for the primary and secondary data we have used in the project. Further we will explain our choice of conducted semi-structured interviews and our reflections upon these. Additionally we will describe the limitations of our data and methodology.
Approach
The relationship between theories and research can be explained with a inductive or deductive approach. The base of our problem definition and research questions, is created from narrowing our problem area and from our gathered knowledge about Apple, thus our overall problem takes a deductive approach.
Our collected data and analyses of the theories are guided by our problem definition. As opposed to our general deductive approach we will conduct interviews, which we will include in our analysis. The theory of discourse analysis and business strategies will be employed as our overall theoretical framework in which we want to include our data in order to conduct our analysis upon. Our analysis will be conducted on our single case, which will be used to make general assumptions. We will work with both theoretical concepts and phenomenon before comparing them with our data.
In our project we have used three different theories in order to get the necessary knowledge to answer our problem definition. Our main theory is the theory of “Discourse Analysis”. The other theories are the “Blue Ocean Strategy” and “The Golden Circle Theory”.
The theory of the Discourse Analysis is our main theory due to the fact that we are going to conduct the analysis in order to obtain knowledge of Apple’s way of using the iPad presentation
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as a part of an overall branding strategy, which we believe differs from other branding strategies.
By doing Discourse Analysis we can gain knowledge about the context in which a given piece of language has been used. We can study a given piece of language and ask ourselves what we can learn about the context in which the language was used and how the context was construed by the speaker/writer and listener/reader. We can use this information to form our hypotheses about what that specific piece of language means and is doing. (Gee, 2011 p. 20) This theory is the one that we mainly have used in our analysis and the rest of the theories have been used to complement it.
We are focusing on the Blue Ocean Strategy because we believe that Apple is a company, which has succeeded in creating a blue ocean through especially value-innovation, which is one of the building blocks within the Blue Ocean Strategy. When looking at the Blue Ocean Strategy we will look into general branding as well. We want to discover if Apple uses some of these general branding strategies or if Apple uses some different kind of branding strategies in line with our hypothesis.
The Blue Ocean Strategy is a book written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in 2005. The book is based on 150 strategic moves during the last 100 years and within 30 industries. We have chosen to use this book, because we wonder if Apple has managed to create a blue ocean using some of the methods Kim and Mauborgne present in the book (ILO, May 2012). We want to stress, that we do not consider this strategy as being a secure way to success; we will make an account for why later in our project.
To complement the Discourse Analysis of how Apple communicates its marketing message we have looked at the “Golden Circle” by Simon Sinek (ILO, May 2012). We have used the theory to gain knowledge about what kind of communication techniques Apple are using during the product presentations. This theory has helped us to understand how Apple’s branding/marketing communication strategies have helped them in increasing their success. Furthermore it has helped us to analyze how they communicate their overall marketing message whereas the
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Discourse Analysis can help us interpret what the marketing message is and what Apple might aim at communicating.
Semi-structured interviews
In the following paragraph we will clarify our choice of qualitative interviewing as a part of our data collection.
We want to conduct qualitative interviews because we find qualitative interviews, or more specific, semi-structured interviews useful for this project. It makes it possible for us to get
“insight into what the interviewee sees as relevant and important” (Bryman, 2012 p.474) and also to a greater extent of collecting detailed and well-responded answers.
Our aim with the semi-structured interviews is to use the different statements in order to discuss and analyze upon, how and if Apple’s branding strategy helps the company to continue to grow.
Through the semi-structured interviews we wish to obtain knowledge about what the regular branding strategy is, and obtain knowledge about how Apple’s branding strategies are build up and how it works. In order to investigate different communication strategies we wish to interview different independent communication advisors and business strategists, who can provide us with the best possible insight to our problem area.
To structure our interviews, we have put together an interview guide with a set of questions, which we aim at getting answered. We start by asking our interviewees one opening question, let the respondent talk for as long as they wish. We then followed up with the rest of the questions when it seems fit in the context of the rest of the interview. We wish to do it this way to give the initiative and direction of the interview to the respondent, so we will get an insight to what he or she sees as relevant and important for our problem area (Bryman, 2012 p. 470) Our aim with the face to face interview was to create an open environment where the interviewee felt it was safe to answer openly.
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We have conducted three semi-structured interviews; one face to face interview, one phone interview and one email interview. Each respondent have worked independently with communication and branding.
Respondent General role Nationality Interview
Respondent one
Hanne Feldthus
(Appendix 1)
Communication advisor Danish Phone
Communication advisor Swedish Face - to - face Respondent two
Helene Schmidt
(Appendix 2)
Respondent three
Martin Roll
(Appendix 3)
Business strategist Danish / Singaporean Email
Table 1.1: Profile of respondents.
Reflections on interviews
The qualitative approach has some limitations, which we have to reflect upon. As we have conducted three interviews in three different ways we also have to be aware of three different methodical approaches with different possibilities and limitations.
To obtain knowledge about branding we have chosen to interview communication advisors and strategists with at least 10 to 15 years of experience. To avoid to some extent the conflict of credibility we have chosen to only conduct interviews with independent advisors with no connection to Apple Inc.
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In order to choose our interviewees, we will to aim at interviewing someone with a relevant education, experience and knowledge regarding our research area and as mentioned at least 10 to
15 years of experience. By choosing interviewees with what we perceive as relevant knowledge and experience, we find that we are able to gain a detailed and substantial insight into the possible branding strategies As our interviewees are independent they are not accountable to
Apple Inc., as possible Apple employees may be, thus the ensuring creditable, valid and unbiased interviews (Bryman, 2012 p.390). However we will of course still have to be critical towards the information, which our interviewees present to us.
As explained only one of our three planned interviews were able to take place face-to-face. Two of the interviews were conducted respectively as a telephone interview (appendix 1) and interview by e-mail (appendix 3)
The phone-interview was conducted with the same starting point as the face-to-face interview: by following our interview-guide and opening the interview with one opening question. The phone-interview has some further advantages compared to the face-to-face interview (Bryman,
2012 p.214). Firstly the interview can be conducted without the respondent and us having to meet in person (Bryman, 2012 p.214). Secondly as we are not in the same room we are more likely to stay unbiased by each other.
One major disadvantage of the phone-interview is however the fact that the duration of the telephone-interview is likely to substantially shorter than the face-to-face interview (Bryman,
2012 p.214). This could affect the quality and depth of the interview as important details may be left out.
E-mail interviews have some different limitations and possibilities, which we also have to reflect upon. To start with we were not able to prepare for the e-mail interview by putting an interviewguide together as with the two other interviews. We therefore looked into how we best possible could get our questions answered. At first we send our expert an introductory e-mail explaining what topic we wanted to investigate, why we found the interviewee suitable for our research and of course if the interviewee wanted to participate in our project. Secondly when the interviewee agreed to participate we created four questions, which we aimed at making as unbiased and open
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as possible, in order to motivate the respondent to give us his immediate and professional opinion about the subject unaffected by our opinions. Thirdly upon receiving the respondent’s comments we gathered the answers and wrote three additional follow-up questions, which we send to the respondent. Fourthly when we received the comments to the follow-up questions we gathered and organized our findings into a questions and answers format, which lastly was sent to our respondent for approval.
Our aim at following this five step guide was the best way possible to avoid the limitations and lack of dynamics of the e-mail interview (Lokman, 2006 p. 2). Unlike a face-to-face- and the telephone-interview an e-mail interview is completely unaffected by time and space, which gave us the possibility of reaching a respondent based in another country, in this case Singapore, with a different time-zone than ours (Lokman, 2006 p. 6). As we did not have to consider time and geographical location the e-mail interview gave us extra time to the other two interviews. In terms of time the e-mail interview is also easier to process as the answers are “transcribed” when received and it takes little editing before they can be processed for analysis (Lokman, 2006 p. 6).
The e-mail-interview can also reduce if not eliminate some of the problems associated with telephone- or face-to-face-interviews, such as visual or nonverbal effects by differences, race, shyness, gestures etc, between the respondent and us (Lokman, 2006 p. 6). A limitation with email interviewing is the possibility that our respondent may not be as effective in writing as he could be verbally. However the opposite could also be true if the respondent is a better writer than speaker. Communication by e-mail could solve the latter problem because neither the participants nor the interviewers need to communicate face-to-face (Lokman, 2006 p. 6).
Relevant parts of the interviews have been transcribed and enclosed in appendix 1, 2 and 3.
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The interviews we have conducted have pointed us in the direction, which we assumed it would.
Generally the interviews point towards that Apple’s marketing strategy differs from other competing companies.
Interview 1 and 2: Our interviewees keep focus on how Apple’s marketing has differed from other companies and how Apple has used product presentations as a part of its overall strategy.
Both interviewees’ comments on how the strategy cannot stand alone, but there have to be a coherency between what you say and what you do. Especially what Steve Jobs influence as a
CEO has been and the fact that Apple now has a new CEO, is processed through these interviews.
Interview 3: In line with interview 1 and 2 this interview looks into the strategies of Apple.
However this interviewee keeps his focus on how success can be achieved through different strategies, and how Apple has avoided competing in a regular market.
Limitations to interviews
Generally about our interviewees it has to be mentioned that we have conducted interviews of independent experts thus the respondents have no direct insight into Apple’s strategies and business methods. The answers and comments we got can therefore “only” be characterized as qualified observations and not direct knowledge. However we find that our chosen experts have the insight into both branding, communications and business-strategy needed to give us an idea about how Apple conduct their marketing, thus we have found their comments both credible, valid and useful for our project.
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It is necessary to collect a reasonable amount of secondary data in the project, because the main and important aspect of our research cannot be supported and uncovered by the accomplished interviews. Our secondary data consists of scientific reports, books, articles and statistics.
Since the launch of the iPad is our main data, we have included a short description of the presentation and why we have chosen to use this in our project. Furthermore we are accounting for our use of Flesh Kincaid and Semantic Field as an analytical tool to our discourse analysis.
This is followed by an explanation of the quantitative data which will work as a supplement to our background knowledge.
Case - The 2010 iPad presentation
As the problem definition states, we want to study the iPad’s impact in making Apple the most valuable brand in the world. By doing a Discourse Analysis of the presentation we aim at confirming our hypothesis that Apple’s marketing differs from other companies. It is possible to conduct a discourse analysis in different ways. We will work with the discourse analysis based on the “understanding that there is much more going on when people communicate than simply the transfer of information” (Gee 2011: 26). Thus when we work with the 2010 iPad presentation we will look into what is being said and reading between the lines. In order to investigate this we have chosen to look into the presentation of the first iPad from 2010.
We will use the 2010 iPad presentation as a single case for our project. A single case can, according to Yin “...explore and investigate contemporary real-life phenomenon through detailed contextual analysis of a limited number of events or conditions, and their relationships.” (Yin, 1994: 23). By using the presentation as a case for our research and conducting our discourse analysis upon the presentation and connecting it with our theory of
Blue Ocean Strategy and Golden Circle theory, we can both achieve a descriptive, exploratory and explanatory perspective of Apple. It is important to note that we cannot limit ourselves to
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only look into the 2010 iPad presentation, but we have to look into other material in order to discover similarities or differences.
The product presentation is something, which Apple has used several times in connection with other products like for instance the iPhone. Usually these presentations create a wast media interest. The first Apple presentation was of the iPod on October 23 2001 (ILO, May 2012). The
2001 presentation, conducted by CEO Steve Jobs, had the same set up as the 2010 iPad presentation. Steve Jobs claimed: “With the iPod, listening to music will never be the same again” (ILO, May 2012) The 2010 iPad presentation had, as mentioned, began the same way with Steve Jobs commenting “introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product today”
(Appendix 4).
We will use the 2010 iPad presentation as a case of how Apple as a company conducts marketing and communicate their marketing message through these presentations. We have looked into other product presentations by Apple and found out that even though the presentations slightly differ from each other, they are still comparable. The presentations have the same settings, an empty stage with a lounge chair and the same main presenter namely Steve Jobs. We however chose the 2010 iPad presentation for multiple reasons. Firstly we find the presentations quite unique for Apple as they are attended by not only technology branch people but also journalists who broadcast directly to people around the world. Secondly we believe that the iPad is the newest member of the Apple family, which have identified the Apple company we know today.
Finally accessing the presentations is fairly straightforward as the presentations are public and filmed. We are going to work with presentation quantitatively by calculating the Flesch-Kinkaid grade of the presentation. But mainly we will work qualitatively by conducting a discourse analysis of the presentation.
The presentation of the iPad can be divided into five essential parts:
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1st part (00:00 - 01:00): Introduction. Steve Jobs initiates the presentation with the comment “introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product today” (Appendix 4) .
2nd part (01:01 - 03:21): Updates: Steve Jobs presents four key updates . “...we sold our 250 million iPod...”, “...we now have 284 retail stores.”, “we now have 284 retail stores” and “is that Apple is an over 15 billion dollar company” (appendix 4).
3rd part (03:22 - 05:36): Apple as company. Steve Jobs explains about Apple’s product line “where does Apple get this revenue? Gets it from three product models: iPods, iPhones and of course Macs.” and Steve Jobs explains what market Apple belongs to by stating “Apple is a mobile devices company”.
4th part (05:37 - 27:12): The main event. The presentation of the iPad.
5th part (27:13 - 59:02): Details about the iPad. At this part Steve Jobs shares the stage with others explain into detail about the iPad.
We have transcribed the presentation part 1 to 4 (appendix 4) for analytical purposes. We have chosen to process these parts of the presentation as these parts focus on the iPad and Apple as a company, where part 5 goes into details about the iPad.
Flesch-Kincaid
In the analysis of the presentation we use different analytic tools. One of them is a text analysis tool found on the webpage UsingEnglish.com. (ILO, May 2012) This program is designed to analyze how hard the language in a given text is to understand. We will use the analysis in order to establish what language is used in the presentation and how difficult it is to understand.
This analysis is done on background of four criteria:
1. How many words there are in an average sentence? If there are many words in each sentence it will probably be harder to understand the meaning of the sentence.
2. Hard words: How many words are consisting of more than three syllables?
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3. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: How many years of school a person in theory would need to understand a given text?
4. Flesch Reading Ease
When putting your transcript in the analyzing tool it can tell us much about what type of text this is and thereby give a picture of how hard Jobs’ presentation is.
The numbers this tool gives us can be seen underneath.
Figure 2.1
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By using this tool we were provided with quantitative data about the text, which we can use in our analysis of the presentation. The Flesch Kincaid grading will be further used in our
Discourse Analysis.
Semantic field
Like the Flesch-Kincaid is a helpful tool when making the discourse analysis, so is the semantic field. When making a semantic scheme you find words that are connected by meaning or words that are related in a certain way.This we have chosen to use to get a better overview of the language used in the speech. When having this it will be easier for us to look into the patterns
Jobs is creating in his use of language; these patterns are of big importance since they are an essential part of the speech. The semantic scheme will in the project work as a supplement to the discourse analysis.
Limitations
By doing a study of one presentation we risk getting a limited look at Apple’s marketing, which cannot form the base for scientific generalizations (Yin 1994: 20). Also the source of presentation is Apple, thus the presentation itself is biased in favor of Apple. To avoid the conflict of generalizations we have looked at other texts and product presentations. Furthermore by doing the Discourse Analysis of the presentation we should be able to get a critical view through our study of the presentation.
We wish to supplement our background knowledge about Apple with quantitative data in order to “entail the collection of numerical, as exhibiting a view of the relationship between theory and research as deductive and a predilection for a natural science approach and as having an objectivist conception of social” (Bryman, 2012 p.160). More specifically we want to gather
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statistical data regarding our assumed success of Apple and if the success continued during the global financial crisis in order to back up our statements and hypotheses.
When using a quantitative approach the relationship between different variables can be examined and explored. The quantitative approach is an ideal way to gain material for further research and analysis.
For this project we are going to focus on statistical data. By looking into the statistical data such as sale figures of different related companies, company value index a.o. it is possible to get an objective overview thus it is possible to interpret and present the facts.
Explanation of quantitative data
Our aim for this project is to investigate how Apple’s strategy in “thinking different” through branding and communication have helped them to raise sales and thereby increase value. By using quantitative data we are able to document the growth of Apple and through statistics show how they have increased their sales and value. Furthermore we are able to show how Apple has increased compared to other companies on the market.
To document this in the best way possible, we need to look at the company through a certain amount of time. We have therefore chosen to use second hand data, since we do not have the time or resources to do it ourselves.
The numbers we have used are from www.ifoapplestore.com
which is a website that keeps costumers updated with news and information about Apple's products and stores. Furthermore they can provide us with yearly and quarterly financial results which are really relevant and useful as secondary data. Additionally we have used results and numbers from the book ‘ Steve
Jobs - Manden bag Apple’ and information and numbers from articles from the website www.appleinsider.com
. These articles provide us with the latest information and statistics within
Apple, some of them also compared to other brands on the market.
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Figure 3.1 – Apple’s sales numbers from 2001 – 2011
(Numbers are from ifoapplestore.com)
The figure above shows the sales numbers of all Apple segments in the period from 2001 - 2011.
The numbers, which are measured in billions of USD, gives us a clear picture of the growth of
Apple during the 10 year period. Our choice of period (2001-2011) is based on when the different Apple products was launched and put on the market. Until the iPod was introduced in the US in October 2001, Apple had serious economic difficulties, but with the return of Steve
Jobs and the creation of the iPod this all changed. The iPod became the best-selling digital audio player ever and managed to sell 250 millions in the end of 2009. (Appendix 4)
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The iPod was the first step for Apple towards great success and the creation and launch of the iPhone in 2007 and later on the iPad in 2010 helped them further to increase the sales numbers and Apple just kept on growing.
The numbers in the figure show that there has been a steadily growth in the sale of Apple products since 2001 with an increase of approximately 0.5 - 6 billion USD each year. The iPad was launched in January 2010 which made the sales numbers go sky high; this is also visible in the figure. In 2009 Apple sold for around 36.5 billion USD, they sold for a little more than 65 billion USD in 2010; Apple increased their sale with almost 29 billion USD.
When Steve Jobs entered the stage at the launch of the iPad in January 2010, he described this new product, a mix between a MacBook and an iPhone, as magical and revolutionary. He also went through the latest sales numbers. Apple managed to sell 2 million iPads in the first two months after it was put on the market. Furthermore in the beginning of May there were already created 5000 iPad apps in the Apple app store; In US during the first month 12 million apps was downloaded of the people who were now an owner of an iPad (Kahney, 2010 p. 262).
Figure 3.2 – Apple’s value from 2002 - 2012
(Numbers are from ifoapplestore.com)
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As Apple increased their sales they also increased their value. The figure above shows how
Apple has managed to increase their value in the period 2002-2012.
In the period from 2002-2007 (the first 6 months) the value of Apple kept growing steadily, however more and more after the summer period in 2004. In the summer of 2007 Apple had in 6 months managed to increase their value with almost 55 billion USD, this was about the same time as the iPhone was released.
The creation of the iPhone was revolutionary and this just made the company grow even bigger.
Once again in 2010 when the iPad was released the value of Apple increased further and this has continued ever since. If we take a look at the 10-year period Apple has managed to increase their value by almost 600 billion USD.
Table 3.1 – Apple vs. other brands
(Numbers are from appleinsider.com)
In the figures discussed in the previous pages it is clearly to see that Apple has done remarkably well. This is not only the case when you look at Apple alone, but also compared to competing brands on the market. When looking at the figure Apple has from the third quarter of 2010 – the third quarter of 2011 managed to increase their growth by 21.5 percent. This is almost 6 percent
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more than HP which ranks second in this figure. It has to be noted that the data does not include media tablets and thereby not the iPad which is an important factor in Apple’s economy. Despite this Apple has still managed to increase their growth more than any other company on the market.
Table 3.2 – Sales of tablets from different brands
(Numbers are from appleinsider.com)
If we have a look at the iPad compared to other tablets the numbers follow the same path as the other products from Apple. The figure above gives us a clear picture of the iPad on the tablet market. According to the research group Gartner Apple is expected to continue to dominate the tablet market by maintaining more than 50 percent of the market share through 2014 (ILO: May
2012). Not only has Apple’s head start on the tablet market provided them with a leading position compared to other brands, but also the fact that other companies have not managed to deliver the same superior and unified user experience across the hardware, software and services will make Apple lead several years more (ILO, May 2012).
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Summary of quantitative data
Through our quantitative data we have shown how Apple has increased their value during the last 10 years. Through the statistics we have discovered a pattern between Apple’s increased sales numbers and the development of their new product. The iPod, iPhone and and in particular the iPad made Apple’s sales number go sky high and the development of these revolutionary products has helped them in becoming the most valuable brand in the world.
Within the last decade, Apple Inc. has redefined the media and entertainment industry through the iPad, the cellphone business through the iPhone and the music business through the iPod.
This section gives an overview of the history of Apple Inc.
Apple was founded by two young friends, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 who both shared a common passion for electronics. They started in the beginning of the 1970’s, by inventing different electrical appliances in Job’s parents garage, and soon after they were already selling some of their products.
Their functions were pretty different, Wozniak who was a tech genius was involved in the creation of the appliances, while Jobs who was characterized as charismatic and charming, was able to get them some free computer parts and later were making sure that they were selling their products (Isaacson, 201: 29)
In 1976 Jobs and Wozniak sat up their company, which they called “Apple computer Co.”
The first computer they sold was the “Apple I”. Wozniak invented the Apple I, with inspiration he got from a “hobby group” that he and Jobs were participating in at that time. After they introduced the Apple I, they got their first order of 50 computers. At this point they moved out from Jobs parents’ garage and into an office. Shortly afterwards, they introduced the “Apple II”, which was an improved model of the Apple I. From this moment and for the next 16 years to come, they sold almost 6 million Apple II computers. In that year when they turned their
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partnership into “Apple computer Co” they valued it at 5309$. Only 4 years after in 1981 Apple was already valued at 1.79 billion dollars (Isaacson, 2011 p.102).
With the success of the Apple II, the company grew dramatically and the “power relations” changed. During the beginning of the 1980’s, Apple introduced the Apple III, which was not as successful (Isaacson, 2011 p.92). Steve Jobs started working on a new computer, the “Lisa”, which was introduced in the early 1980’s. Wozniak was still working with the Apple II team and was trying to get involved as little as possible in the company concerns. At the same time another
Apple team was working on the Macintosh computer, which was introduced in 1984.
In 1983, Apple appointed a new CEO, John Sculley. Jobs who was characterized with warm and fickle temper, by that time, was making most of the people around him angry by telling them that what they did was a “piece of shit”, which caused the board to come to the decision of taking all authorities out of Jobs hands and leave him as a non- executive chairman of the board (Isaacson,
2011 p.206).
Jobs who acknowledge that his company was been taken away from him was furious and devastated. But within a small time of period Jobs decided to resign and open a new company with 5 others he recruited from Apple, “NeXT Inc.” (Isaacson, 2011 p.217)
Apple continued without Jobs and Wozniak and in 1989 they introduced the “Macintosh
Portable”, a battery powered computer, which was the first computer, sent to outer space. One year later they introduced the “Macintosh LC”. In 1991, Apple launched the “PowerBook”, which was successful and finally brought increasing revenues of Apple after some slow years.
However, In the next few years Apple’s revenues were sliding down after losing a lawsuit with
Microsoft, and working on different products which were not successful. These events led to the replacement of John Scully with Michael Spindler as a CEO In 1993. Apples situation kept worsening with low revenues and stocks slumping. Spindler tried to sell Apple to Sun, IBM and
Hewlett-Packard, but failed and in 1996 he got replaced by Gil Amelio who only wished to be a part of Apple for one year, in which Apple lost one billion dollars. Trying to save the company, he made Apple buy Steve Jobs’ company “NeXT Inc.” and later Amelio was replaced by Jobs as
CEO. (Isaacson, 2011 p.296)
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Jobs saved Apple from the edge of the grave after they lost 30% of their sales in these past two years. The year Jobs got back, he publicly announced a new partnership between Apple and
Microsoft; these two companies had for over a decade been fighting over patents issues.
(Isaacson, 2011 p.322) The partnership and its announcement doubled the price of Apple compared to the price of the stock the day Amelio resigned, and added 830$ million to Apple’s stock market capitalization. (Isaacson, 2011 p.326)
In that point Apple started with their brand image campaign “ Think Different” where they were saying that: “Apple is about people who think outside the box, who want to use computers to help to change the world.” (Isaacson, 2011 p.329) With his return, Jobs also cut down the number of a lot of Apple’s products that they worked on at that time, since he believed that the company only should focus on four important products at one time in order to become a serious and successful producer of personal computers. (Isaacson, 2011 p.338)
In 1998 Apple introduced the iMac, a desktop computer aimed at the home consumer market.
(Isaacson, 2011 p.348) By the end of that year, Apple sold 800,000 iMacs and a year after they introduced the iBook which later in 2006 was replaced by the MacBook line (Isaacson, 2011 p.356).
In 2000 they released the Power Mac G4 Cube, which was an alluring modern designed laptop.
The Mac G4 Cube did not achieve success due to the high price it had and that caused the stock price to fall in 50% just in one day. (Isaacson, 2011 p.445)
In 2001, Apple unveiled iTunes and announced it would be free to all Mac users. This led to the invention of the iPod, their first music device that brought Apple to transform from a company that make computers into being the world’s most valuable company. (Isaacson, 2011 p.384)
Since then Apple has developed over 20 different models of the iPod.
In the same year, Apple opened their first store in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. In spite of the negative predictions by the media, in 2004, they were setting a record in the retail industry for reaching the billion dollars milestone. (Isaacson, 2011 p.374)
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In 2003, Apple introduced the iTunes store, in order to offer their iPod users to download songs in a simple, safe and legal way. That introduction was a great success and had sold one million songs in the first six days after it was introduced. (Isaacson, 2011 p.410)
By 2005, the iPod sales were skyrocketing and the product was accounting for 45% of the revenue of that year. (Isaacson, 2011 p.465) In January 2006 Apple introduced their best-selling
Macintosh in history, the MacBook. The Macbook line included different models of Macbook
Pro and the MacBook Air that were introduced between 2006 and 2009.
In the meantime, Apple delegated a lot of attention and capital to their next product, the iPhone, which went on sale in 2007. Despite being the most expensive phone in the world, the iPhone was a great success and was immediately referred by bloggers as “The Jesus Phone” (Isaacson,
2011 p.474).
Already in the year of 2010, Apple became the largest mobile device in the world. (iPad launch,
2010) In 2010 Apple launched the iPad, which attracted a lot of attention and excitement. In less than a month, Apple sold one million iPads, which was actually twice as fast as the iPhone reached that market. It became the most successful consumer product launch in history
(Isaacson, 2011 p.496).
Steve Jobs, who was diagnosed with cancer, resigned as Apple’s CEO in 2011 and was replaced by Tim Cook. Jobs died later that year. Today, almost 40 years after Jobs created Apple; it has become the most valuable company in the world.
Steve Jobs death brought a lot of predictions and discussions about Apple’s future destiny for example whether Apple could still be able to come up with innovative revolutionary products without him.
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In this paragraph we will go through our main theoretical framework consisting of the Discourse
Analysis, and our secondary theories namely the Blue Ocean Strategy and the Golden Circle
Theory.
Discourse Analysis
In language there is a direct connection between saying (informing), doing (action) and being
(identity). In order to understand what people fully are saying, we need to know who is saying it, what they are trying to do and who they are trying to be by saying it.
The words can be the same, but their meaning might be very different in different contexts.(Gee,
2011 p.2) The language gets its meaning from the practices within which it is used (which is ways of saying, doing and being). (Gee, 2011 p.5)
By doing discourse analysis we can gain knowledge about a context in which a piece of language has been used. In order to do that, we have to look at the text and ask ourselves what we can learn about the context in which that language was used and how the context was constructed by the speaker/writer and listener/reader. We can use this information to form a hypothesis about what that piece of language means and is doing. (Gee, 2011 p.20)
There are many different approaches to Discourse Analysis. Some of them only looks at the content of the language being used while linguistic approaches focus at the structure of the language (grammar).
This linguistic approach looks at how structures of language function to make meaning in specific contexts. Different linguistic approaches use different theories of grammar and have different views on how to talk about meaning. The approach we decided to use as our discourse analysis guideline is the one used in the book “An introduction to Discourse Analysis” which:
“…looks at meaning as an integration of ways of saying (informing), doing (action) and being
(identity), and grammar as a set of tools to bring about this integration.” (Gee, 2011 p.8)
Different grammars offer us different ways of saying things and by looking closely at the structure of a sentence we can learn about it. (Gee, 2011 p.9)
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Discourse Analysis can be done by using a critical or a descriptive approach.
The descriptive goal is to describe how language works in order to understand it. While the critical goal is not only to describe how language works, but also to speak about social and political issues. In this book the approach is critical since the author believe that language itself is political. (Gee, 2011 p.9) This approach includes a theory about the nature of language-in-use, which is about saying-doing-being and how it gains its meaning from enacts and the practice it is a part of. (Gee, 2011 p.11)
The book provides tools for making a Discourse Analysis inquiry and strategies to use them. It is important to keep in mind that these tools are meant to be “thinking devices” that should be adapted for the reader's own purposes and are not meant to give specific definitions.
The author claims that whenever we use language we build up seven areas of “reality” and he calls them the “seven building tasks” of language. (Gee, 2011 p.17) These are seven areas or things that language is used for in order to enact or make things in the world. (Gee, 2011 p.28) A
Discourse Analysis should ask seven questions regarding these seven tasks. The seven building tasks are:
1. Significance.
Through language we are able to express to others if things are significant to us or not.
Discourse Analysis Question: “How is this piece of language being used to make certain things significant or not and in what way?“ (Gee, 2011 p.17)
2. Practices (Activities).
When we are talking, we are taking part in some sort of practice or activity. We usually use language that match the practice we are engaging in. For example, while participating in a board meeting we will use a more official language then when we chat with our friends.
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Discourse Analysis Question: ”What practice (activity) or practices (activities) is this piece of language being used to enact (i.e., get others to recognize as going on)?
(Gee, 2011 p.18)
3. Identities.
People use language in order to be recognized with a certain identity or role.
For example, a person can talk in a committee meeting officially as the chairman and one moment after talk in a different friendly way to his colleagues that are sitting in that meeting.
Discourse Analysis Question: “What identity or identities is this piece of language being used to enact (i.e., get others to recognize or operative)? What identity or identities is this piece of language attributing to others and how does this help the speaker or writer enact his or her own identity?” (Gee, 2011 p.18)
4. Relationships.
Language is used as an expression of what sort of relationship the speaker/writer want or is trying to have with his listener/reader.
Discourse Analysis Question: “What sort of relationship or relationships is this piece of language seeking to enact with others (present or not)?” (Gee, 2011 p.19)
5. Politics.
Language gives voice to people’s perspective on social goods.
Discourse Analysis Question: “What perspective on social goods is this piece of language communicating (i.e., what is being communicated as to what is taken to be “normal”, “right”,
“good”, “correct”, “proper”, “appropriate”, “valuable”, “the ways things are”, “the way things ought to be”, “high status or low status”, “like me or not like me”and so forth)? (Gee,
2011 p.19)
6. Connections.
People create connections and relevance to other things through language.
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Discourse Analysis Question: “How does this piece of language connect or disconnect things; how does it make one thing relevant or irrelevant to another?” (Gee, 2011 p.19)
7. Sign, System and Knowledge.
Humans are making knowledge and belief claims within different sign systems all the time.
Language can be used to make a certain sign system and forms of knowledge and belief relevant or privileged.
Discourse Analysis Question: “How does this piece of language privilege or disprivilege specific sign systems (e.g., Spanish vs. English, technical language vs. everyday language, words vs. images, words vs. equations , etc.) or different ways of knowing and believing or claims to knowledge and belief (e.g., science vs. the humanities, science vs. “common sense ”biology vs.
“creation science”) ?“ (Gee, 2011 p.20)
In addition, the author is introducing six “tools of inquiry” which are six areas that can assist analyzing the working of the seven building tasks. (Gee, 2011 p.121) Those tools are: a) Social languages: People can use different style and varieties of language for different purposes it can be helpful to look upon how different social languages are used (Gee, 2011 p.28). b) Discourse: People can build their identities by combining language with certain actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing and using various symbols, tools and objects.
By looking at those things it can assist in finding the identities people are building for themselves
(Gee, 2011 p.28). c) Conversations: Occasionally, peoples words are relating with some debates or issues that are familiar to society. These issues have an impact on how language is interpreted since people have already knowledge and their own opinion regarding these issues. Therefore another tool for
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Discourse Analysis would be considering the different conversations that the language relates to
(Gee, 2011 p.29).
d) Intertextuality: When people talk or write, their worlds are in some cases related to other texts (words that were expressed by other people). Hearing those words can make us associate or remind us of the other text and this is assistant to look at while making the discourse analysis
(Gee, 2011 p.29). e) Situated meanings: Language can get different meanings in the different contexts it is used in
(Gee, 2011 p.65).
f) Figured worlds: People have different point of views on what is normal or typical based on different experiences they have had and by different social and cultural groups to which they belong (Gee, 2011 p.76).
When we are doing the Discourse Analysis, we will use the seven questions and the six inquiry tools above. Since we will only use a small piece of data taken from a larger corpus, we will formulate a hypothesis about this data and after that, we will look into more data, in order to see if we can gain more confidence in our hypothesis. There is no “definitive proof” in this sort of investigation and we have to be open to find evidence that contradicts our view
(Gee, 2011 p.20).
An ideal discourse analysis will have to deal with both past and present as a discourse analysis is only giving a description of a small part of the full picture. In addition, Discourse Analysis involves “asking questions about how language, at given time and place, is used to engage in the seven building tasks we have discussed earlier.” (Gee, 2011 p.121). That is made by using each
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of the six tools of inquiry to ask questions about each one of the seven building tasks, which is
42 questions together.
Although, a real Discourse Analysis does not deal with all of these questions, but only some of them. Finally, the way to deal with each one of the building task while considering each one of the tools of inquiry is by asking the following questions:
Building task 1: Significance: How are situated meanings, social languages, figured worlds, intertextuality, Discourses and Conversations being used to build relevance or significance for things and people in context?
Building task 2: Practices (Activities): How are situated meanings, social languages, figured worlds, intertextuality, Discourses and Conversations being used to enact a practice (activity) or practices (activities) in context?
Building task 3: Identities: How are situated meanings, social languages, figured worlds, intertextuality, Discourses and Conversations being used to enact or depict identities (socially significant kinds of people)?
Building task 4: Relationships: How are situated meanings, social languages, figured worlds, intertextuality, Discourses and Conversations being used to build and sustain (or change or destroy) social relationships?
Building task 5: Politics: How are situated meanings, social languages, figured worlds, intertextuality, Discourses and Conversations being used to create, distribute, or withhold social goods or to construe particular distributions of social goods as “good” or “acceptable” or not?
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Building task 6: Connections: How are situated meanings, social languages, figured worlds, intertextuality, Discourses and Conversations being used to make things and people connect or relevant to each other or irrelevant to or disconnected from each other?
Building task 7: Sign Systems and Knowledge: How are situated meanings, social languages, figured worlds, intertextuality, Discourses and Conversations being used to privilege or disprivilege different sign systems (language, social languages, and other sorts of symbol systems) and ways of knowing? (Gee, 2011 p.121)
Besides referring the above mentioned questions, there are different sub questions that can be asked and other aspects that can be looked into. We decided only to look into the ones we find relevant to our investigation.
We will look into “Collocational Patterns” which are patterns of words that “hang together” and implies a particular social language and the identity associated with it (Gee, 2011 p.203). We will do that by tracking words and expressions that are correlated and create an associated pattern at the listeners and reader.
Limitations
Discourse Analysis always remains a matter of interpretation. As there is no concrete and bulletproof data provided through discourse analysis. The reliability and the validity of one's research and analysis depends on the force and logic of arguments provided (Gee, 2011 p.250).
Even the best constructed arguments are subject to subjective reading and different interpretations. And as many different arguments there can be found to backup specific topics, as many different theories and methods can be found about discourse analysis (Gee, 2011 p.250).
Discourse Analysis is however applicable to every situation and every subject both spoken and written. The new perspective provided by Discourse Analysis allows personal growth and a high level of creative fulfillment. However, Discourse Analysis does not provide definite answers, but can provide an insight and knowledge based on the argumentation used through one’s analysis.
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It is also important to keep in mind that discourses have no clear boundaries. Language is in a constantly changing process over time.
”Discourse have no discrete boundaries because people are always, in history, creating new
Discourses, changing old ones, and contesting and pushing the boundaries of discourses.” (Gee,
2011 p.37).
Blue Ocean Strategy
The Blue Ocean Strategy is presented by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in 2005. The strategy is based on 150 strategic moves during the last 100 years and within 30 industries. We have chosen to use this strategy, because we are convinced that Apple have managed to create a blue ocean using some of the same methods that Kim and Mauborgne present in the book. (ILO,
May 2012) We make you aware, that we do not consider this strategy as being a secure way to success we will make an account for why this is later in our analysis.
The blue ocean represents all of the unknown and non-existing markets of today. All of the known branches of today is represented in the red oceans. Within the red oceans the rules of competition and boundaries of the branch has already been settled. This means that in order to beat our competitors, you will have to fight them within this framework – you do not in a blue ocean.
According to Kim and Mauborgne you do not fight over already existing demand together with a lot of others operators in a blue ocean like you do in a red ocean, because you create a new product with new consumers and thereby demand. This means that competition within the normal frames is irrelevant within a blue ocean.
Value innovation
The expression value innovation is a fundamental concept in regards to the Blue Ocean Strategy.
Value innovation is the fundamental way to make competition irrelevant and make a leap in
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value for the costumers of the company. In order to make value innovation, it is important, that the companies do not only focus on either value or innovation. Kim and Mauborgne found in their research that if a company tends to focus too much on innovation, and especially technological innovation, they will often come out with a product too advanced and too expensive in relation to what the consumers are ready for and willing to pay. (Mauborgne 2011, p.25) This is why it is important to increase the value of the product for the consumers at the same time, but without increasing the expenditures for the company. It is exactly at this point many companies fail because there is a general expectation that to increase the value of the product for the consumers the companies has to increase their expenditures. This is one of those points where companies who successes in a blue ocean separates from those who do not. If the companies can increase the value of a product and at the same time maintain or even lower the expenditures they will make a higher profit and the consumers will still feel they are getting higher consumption utility. So the point is that companies will have to be innovative and create new products that differentiate from previously known products and services and at the same time do it at a low cost. (Mauborgne 2011, p. 25) But why go through all this trouble with creating a new market, when there already exist so many known markets, where all the footwork has been done and the rules of competition are already known? – Because if you can succeed in creating a blue ocean you can make a gigantic profit. In a blue ocean you do not have to benchmark against all the other competitors like in the red ocean by fighting over customers and market shares in a price war or making the product “bigger” and more expensive to produce.
The Strategy Canvas
In the “Blue Ocean Strategy”–book the two authors develop some analytic tools and frameworks in order to analyze what and how the companies are creating blue oceans. One of these is the strategy canvas. This tool can give a picture of the market’s current situation and thereby give a clue about which factors the competitors currently are investing in and the different offers the customers get from your branch (Mauborgne, 2011 p.37). The company rates how it values
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different factors within the industry and thereby creates a value curve. When illustrating the strategy canvas it will look like this:
Figure 4.1 (ILO, May 2012)
E.g. if a company within the cleaning product industry discovers that all of its competitors are prioritizing how clean their product can make things, but are not concerned about how the product smells. The company also finds that its customers care much more about how the product they are using smells than the price and therefore they begin to develop a cleaning product, which has a nice fragrance and good cleaning abilities, but might not quite as good as its competitors. They also begin to prioritize the bottle design a little higher than before, which makes the customers aware of the better smell. This means that they can set the price of the product higher than their competitors because they now offer a product with another quality than everyone else and therefore they do not have to compete on price. If their strategy canvas were to be illustrated it would look like this;
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Figure 4.2
The strategy canvas is one of the first steps in the analysis a company has to make in order to implement the blue ocean strategy. If the company finds that their value curve is very similar to the competitors it is clear that the company is within a red ocean with much competition
(Mauborgne 2011, p.52). By looking at the current situation within the market and the current offers available to the customers they can try to locate how they can differ from their competitors, and thereby create a new and unique value curve.
As a supplement tool to the strategy canvas Kim and Mauborgne also developed a tool called a four-action framework. This tool has the task to locate factors and ask the questions if they should be eliminated, reduced, raised or created. (Mauborgne 2011, p.40) Illustrating the framework can look like this:
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Figure 4.3 (ILO, May 2012)
To find the factors that need to eliminate the company will have to look at the factors that the industry normally is competing on and often take for granted. Many of these factors do often not add any value to the product and way too often it might even have a negative effect on the value.
This happens because what add value to the product for the customers might have changed without the companies changed their ways of competing and therefore they are trying to benchmark each other on old terms of competition. These factors are very important to locate because this way the companies will probably be able to lower their costs (Kim & Mauborgne
2011, p.41). The second question about which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard is a question about if any products might have been overdesigned to a point where the customers might not even get a higher consumer utility from the “better” and “bigger” product, and often when dealing with technology the products might even get too complicated for the normal consumer to use. This means that even by reducing some things in the product,
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the companies can actually give the customers a better product that they feel more comfortable with.
The third step is to locate where the customers are forced to make a compromise in the industry.
If you can do this, you can find the things that need to be increased focus on. The fourth and last question is what are the things that the industry is missing? Can you create something, which the industry has not offered before and does not offer at the moment?
Kim and Mauborgne argue that a good strategy has three characteristics. These are: focus, divergence and compelling tagline. By focus they mean that the companies have to accept that they can’t have focus on all of the competitions factors within the industry. This is where they have to use the answers they got from asking the questions in the four-action framework. They have to put their focus on the things they decided to raise and create. This means that they are capable of decrease their expenditures, but make sure that the things they have focus on are at a high standard. At this point it is of course crucial that the companies choose to focus on the things that will increase the value of the product for customers. With divergence they mean that the value curve of the company has to be different from other companies. They argue that what happens to most companies is that when they try to keep up with all the other companies the value curve and profile of the company will become similar to all the others in the red ocean, and they will not be unique to the costumers. (Mauborgne 2005, p. 39)
They argue that the tagline for the company is very important as well. It has to deliver a clear message and be truthful. If customers find it untrue or that the company doesn’t fulfill their expectations they will lose trust and interest in the company (Kim & Mauborgne 2005, p. 40).
Apple and branding
A brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.
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A company must have nursed its brand in order to gain the title as the most valuable brand in the world. Looking into Apple’s approach to branding we have interviewed two communication advisors.
Hanne Feldthus, independent communications consultant and strategic director Wibroe, Duckert
& Partners, says; “Of course there are companies other than Apple, which does the same (build distinctive products edit.), but there are no one in the world who have been so adept at building the attraction into the product as Apple. It is simply a gimmick that many want to own.”
(Appendix 1)
Feldthus also states the global brand message from Apple is ‘Think Different’. When Steve Jobs started a new era in beginning of the millennium with himself as front figure, he also made sure that the target segment could identify with the differently thought products. When providing the consumers with the solution or product they need, it is rarely necessary to brand actively as the products will brand themselves.
Helene D. S. Schmidt, self-employed strategic and communication adviser, says about Apple;
“The overall strategy could be ‘less is more’. Consumers don’t need a hundred different computers, if the choice of one or two can fulfill your requirements or give you more. And when you offer, like Apple, a few well-defined products people are more likely to buy and be satisfied.”
(Appendix 1)
A recognized and respected brand will therefore increase the opportunity of customers buying a product from the same company again given that the products has lived up to the standard of the consumer. This is exactly what Apple has done Schmidt says: “We talk about different products and not necessarily the same consumers, but when you own one Apple product the chance of you buying another is high, even in a very competitive market” (Appendix 2)
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Apple has in a very competitive market with decreasing product differentiation successfully become the most valuable brand. Through product diversity and personalizing the Apple brand has with simplicity identified the consumers needs and provided them with a solution. By offering a unique user experience and being in control of everything making sure that is it perfection Apple has overtaken their competitors. Schmidt states:
“ The key factor is the user experience through all stages of the product; the buying, the using and the ownership. When one part of the experience suffers the entire brand suffers. Even if the stage isn’t directly under the company’s control. It is here Apple has been amazing at taking control of every stage” (Appendix 2)
The Golden Circle
Year after year, Apple is more innovative than all of their competition. Well, they are just a computer company like everyone else; they have the same access to the same talent, the same agencies, the same consultants and the same media – then why is it that they seem to have something different? Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?”
Sinek’s study and visionary thinking is useful for our project given that our conducted interviews correspond very nicely with Sinek’s theory. In the following paragraph we will account for his
“Golden Circle model” and his example on Apple (ILO, May 2012).
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Figure 5.1
In accordance to Simon Sinek there is a pattern. All the great and inspiring leaders and organizations in the world like Apple, all think, act and communicate the exact same way and it is the complete opposite to everyone else. Simon Sinek is codifying it through his model “The
Golden Circle” – Why, How, What – this little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others are not. (ILO, May 2012)
A brief definition of the terms:
On the basis of Sinek’s theory every single person on the planet, every organization knows what they do 100%, some know how they do it, whether you call it your differential value of proposition or your proprietary process or your USP. But very few within these organizations know why they do it. And by why you do not need to make a profit, that’s a result - it’s about asking: What’s your purpose? What’s your belief? What’s your course? Why does your organization exist? And why should everyone care?
“As a result the way we think, act and communicate is from the outside in. We go from the clearest thing to the fussiest thing. But the inspiring leaders and organizations, regardless of their size, regardless of their industry all think, act and communicate from the inside out” (Sinek,
2010 p.2)
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On the basis of “The Golden Circle” a marketing message from Apple may sound like this, if they were just like everyone else: “We make great computers – they are beautified designed, simple to use and user friendly – Do you want to buy one?” We say what we do, we say how we are different or how we are better, and we expect some sort of behavior apertures or a vote – but that’s uninspiring. Here is an example on how Apple actually communicates:
“ Everything we do we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently.
The way we are challenging the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly, we just happened to make great computers – do you want to buy one?” (ILO, May 2012)
By reversing the order of information people are now ready to buy a computer from Apple. As
Sinek repeatedly express: “ People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” (ILO May,
2012) which explains why every single person is perfectly comfortable with buying a computer or any other product from Apple.
“The goal is not do business with everybody who needs what you have; the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.” (ILO, May 2012). In accordance to Sinek’s if you look at a cross section of the human brain looking from the top down, what you see is the human brain is actually broken into three major components that corresponds perfectly with “The
Golden Circle”. Our homo-sapiens brain, the neo cortex corresponds with the “what” level. The neo cortex is responsible for all our rational and analytical thought and language. The middle two sections make our limbic brains and our limbic brains are responsible for all our feelings, like trust and loyalty. It is also responsible for all human behavior, all decision-making and it has no capacity for language. In other words, when we communicate from the outside in, people can understand fast amounts of complicated information, like features, benefits, facts and figures, it just doesn’t drive behavior. But when we communicate from the inside out we are talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior and then we allow people to rationalize it
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with the tangible things we say and do. ”The goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have, the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe” (ILO, May 2010)
The Law of Diffusion of Innovation
The Law of Diffusion of Innovation is a theory seeking to explain how, why and at what rate new ideas and technology spreads in a culture (ILO, May 2012).
According to this theory it is important to get especially two groups of peoples’ approval, namely the innovators and early adapters, if you want to reach the majority in a market. The majority consists of the early majority and the late majority. According to Sinek is the early majority not willing to adapt a new invention unless some else have tried it before. The late majority is more skeptical and makes decisions based more on logic than the other groups. They will naturally follow when they can see the new invention has been adapted and approved by almost the rest of the society. These four groups are all potential buyers of a given invention. There is one last group of people. These people are the ones who will never get the idea behind the invention
(ILO, May 2010). They will probably only buy it, if there is no other way around, if they do not want to be excluded from the society. E.g. people refusing to buy computers or telephones.
Thus if a company really wants success in a market they first of all have to sell their product to the innovators and early adapters. The innovators make up about 2.5% of the population and they are the first group to try out a product and they are willing to take risks with new ideas and products. The early adaptors are about 13.5 % of the population. People in this group are the ones right after the innovators who are willing to adapt new inventions. (ILO, May 2012) These two groups doesn’t adapt new inventions on basis of logic, but because they are passionate about it, and it feels right. They are making the thing you can call “guts decisions” or intuitive decisions which is based on what they believe about the world and reality they live in.
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Modes of Persuasion
Aristotles, the ancient Greek rhetorician and philosopher, argued that there are three different modes of persuasion used in communication besides the words themselves. The three appeals are ethos, pathos and logos. (Duke, 1990, p.81)
The goal of ethos is basically to achieve trustworthiness. The self-portrayal of the speaker should express credibility and authenticity, and ethos will only look at the appearance of the character than the characteristics itself. Authority, body language, gestures, facial expression and the voice are all factors that are used through ethos.
Pathos is appealing to the emotions. The objective is to achieve an emotional reaction in the audience moving them into a favorable affection towards the intent of the speaker. This can be achieved by using ‘figures of speech’, a certain style of language or connecting with the audience by building bridges through belief systems, values, attitudes or behavior.
Logos is the more technical aspect. It deals with the content, structure and argumentation in the speech. The most important aspect is truthfulness and therefore it is vital to have a correspondence between the facts presented and the facts in reality. The goal of logos is to deliver logical reasoning to the arguments presented emphasizing the fact that the speaker is proving something or at least trying to prove something.
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Through this chapter we will conduct our analysis. Our analysis will be divided into two parts. In the first part we will combine the two theories, the blue ocean strategy and the golden circle theory, and the iPad presentation. In the second part we will conduct our discourse analysis..
The Golden Circle
In the beginning of the presentation Steve Jobs points to a comment by the Wall Street Journal.
Figure 6.1
Without directly mentioning it Steve Jobs points to a positive third party reference of the iPad.
Jobs is using the reference as a strategic move to assure the listeners that the product (tablet) he is about to present is something important and that the coming product’s news value is large enough for the Wall Street Journal to spend time on it.
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The reason why Jobs uses a third party source, in this case the Wall Street Journal, is that it makes the statement more reliable if an outside impartial source recommends it (Gallo, 2011 p.37). Most people recognize The Wall Street Journal as a reliable and impartial source, which make the listeners of the presentation more comfortable with the reliability of the presentation.
We believe that Jobs and Apple have chosen the quote by The Wall Street Journal accompanied by the picture above to illustrate how they see themselves not as a regular company, but as something bigger than that. Apple wants to see themselves not as a company that produces but a company that creates and creates something extraordinary. Thus Apple tries to insinuate that it is a company, which extraordinary.
Jobs explains that he does not see Apple from the fiscal point of view and he states “… Apple is an over 50 billion dollar company. I like to forget that, because that’s not how we think about
Apple. But it is pretty amazing” (Appendix 4). This is important, because he states that the money is not the reason why he is in the business and not what he believes in. Still of course he recognizes that it is amazing that they have been able to make this substantial revenue. In accordance with Sinek’s theory that “The goal is not do business with everybody who needs what you have, the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.” (ILO, May
2010).
What Apple believes
As we have mentioned before one of the reasons to Apple’s success is according to Simon Senik the way they communicate their marketing message. This message he states is the message about why Apple do what they do. We believe they are trying to convince potential buyers that they believe in thinking different and being unique.
The reason why Apple is using this technique to convince people to buy their products isn’t because they believe that they can persuade the majority this way, but because they are trying to persuade two important groups of people. These groups of people are, as explained in the chapter
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about the golden circle, called the innovators and early adapters (ILO, May 2010). This is why
Steve Jobs starts the presentation by telling about how Apple for a long time have been leading in the creation of new and as he call them himself “ revolutionary ” products. He speaks about how Apple created the first modern laptop computer and how he thinks they have developed to incredible laptops today. He also states, “Just in few years ago in 2007 Apple reinvented the phone with the iPhone and a few years later we have got the great iPhone 3GS – the best phone in the world.” When he states that Apple reinvented the phone, he makes it clear that Apple believe in changing the way things are to make them better, being revolutionary and as they put it themselves “ thinking different ”. Those innovators and early adapters, who shares the same believes will buy the iPad because they believe in the concept about thinking different and being unique. Not only do these people want to buy the iPad, they want to be the first to buy it. They buy it because of their believes and because they want to show the world what they believe, thus what their identity is. Through the “think different” campaign Apple managed to associate itself with people like Einstein, Ghandi, Maria Callas and others. Our interviewee Hanne Feldthus argues that Apple manifest as our interviewee Hanne Feldthus puts it “We think different, and we share that with our core target group, who also think different, and show that our products are different.” (Appendix 1). By buying an Apple product you also buy a lifestyle or identity, which is anticooperative, creative, innovative and different.
Identity can be regarded from the outside and from the inside. It is regarded from the inside, when the individual reflects upon itself and from the outside when other people reflect on the individual (Laursen 1998 p.164). When other people reflect on an individual from the outside, they will either see that person’s social or personal identity, it depends on how intimate they know each other. The social identity is based on the different groups, real or imagined communities, status, lifestyle or social class the individual is part of (Laursen 1998 p.164).
The social identity is often formed on the basis of superficial observations about a person e.g. the information you get from looking at a person on the street. So by walking with an iPhone or an
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iPad in the hand, many people are probably trying to create a social identity, where they show to the rest of the world, that they share the same beliefs as Apple.
Persuade your listeners
When we are to look at how Steve Jobs uses these modes of persuasion, he is, like any good speaker, a frequent user of them. From the beginning Jobs walks onto the stage he is already using ethos. His clothes, body language and gestures screams out ‘I am the American average
Joe’. This makes it easier for the normal American to connect with him creating trust towards
Jobs. He then reveals a little bit of his personal side showing a picture of himself when he started
Apple. He becomes a little bit vulnerable in order to let the audience trust him even more. Once this trust relationship has been established Jobs takes it to a higher level by showing the features of the iPad himself sitting down in chair. The audience can now picture themselves setting down in the comfort of their own home and using the iPad like Jobs is doing on stage. Once again, showing the features of the iPads browsing function, Jobs chooses to enter only what we might call typical American home pages (i.e The New York Times, National Geographic, Time
Magazine) again building a bridge between audience and speaker. The objective has now been achieved with the audience having a trustworthy view towards Jobs and there is a better chance that there is a better chance that the audience will believe every word he says.
In order for Jobs to present and ‘sell’ the iPad he must make some logical arguments of why people should buy this product. He starts off by showing updates about Apple proving that they are well capable of selling products and have grown bigger than their opponents. If the audience were uncertain about Apple’s credibility this will ensure a little more faith towards Apple. In line with the Apple philosophy Jobs doesn’t start talking about the facts and numbers of the iPad giving the audience a logical reason (better, faster, stronger) to buy it. Instead he starts talking about the features and the looks of the iPad showing the simplicity of using all the features including; browsing, movies, music, mail, calendar and photos. He offers a solution to problems the audience might struggle with on a daily basis instead of trying to sell a product. At the very
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end Jobs does however explain the specifications of the iPad also giving the argument that it is a green product speaking to the audience’s conscience.
Throughout the presentation Jobs appeals to the audience’s emotions. Right from the first picture that Jobs refers to which is a picture of Moses with the ten commandments, he is slightly implying and playing with the fact that some people nowadays sees Apple as their church and
Jobs as their God. When showing the features he uses a variety of pictures and means to achieve the broadest perspective as possible. The main segment in the presentation using pathos seems however to be family based. Built in slideshows showing family pictures, viewing a video from
YouTube with a dog surfing and viewing a scene from the animation comedy ‘Up’ all speak to the family segment of the western world. Jobs appeals more specifically to the dads of the family when playing artist such as Bob Dylan and he appeals to moms of the family when constantly referring to Paris (map of central Paris and map of the metro in Paris). The French capital is often rated at the top of America’s favorite destinations in Europe and the city of love is a dream for every American housewife to visit (ILO, May 2012) is slightly implying that buying an iPad will fulfill your dreams or at least bring you closer. He is also talking to the more ‘hip’ crowd when searching for sushi restaurants nearby, and perhaps also trying to increase sales in Asia by recommending this Japanese eating. All in all Jobs uses means that speaks to everyone and makes it possible for the audience to picture their family photos in a slideshow or standing next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Business is still business
Apple is a business and like every other business company their goal is to make money and creating as much profit as possible, and it is important for us to state that we do not believe that they only are in this business because they have such strong beliefs about the world we live in and want to change it and make it better. This is one of the critique points of Simon Senik’s theory about The Golden Circle. He makes it sounds like Apple only is in the business because of their desire to challenge status quo and thinking different. However we are convinced, that
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Apple would not be in this business, if they did not make money on it. But is it right that one of the reasons for their success is that they have a strong believe in what they are doing or maybe just are very good at communicating their marketing message and convince people, that they have such strong beliefs.
Apple and the Blue Oceans
The golden circle idea of communicating what you believe and incorporating your beliefs into the products you deliver in this case Apple’s “thinking different” can be connected into the Blue
Ocean Strategy. We have however through our investigation found that Apple is a great example of a company, which has used many of the same strategic moves presented in the Blue Ocean
Strategy.
Apple did not start on a blue ocean wave, but started as a regular technology company on what we assume developed into a highly competitive market or a red ocean through the years. The market for technology is indeed characterized by many different companies basically producing the same thing; smartphones, laptops, desktops and so on. The focuses on most of Apple’s competitors have been on price and quantity of technology. Apple’s focus has however been on
“... the products have to be so distinctive. The products have to be beautifully designed and better than the competitors” (Appendix 1). This so called challenging of status quo seems to has been the core of Apple’s strategy since Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997. According to Chan Kim and Mauborgne customers will usually demand more of the same product at a lower price (Mauborgne, 2005, 22). It is the industry, in this case the technology companies, which has to educate the customers to appreciate other values than price and quantity. Focusing on other parameters than price and quantity of technology and acknowledging that customers can learn to appreciate quality and design above price. As mentioned earlier in the project, upon his return to Apple in 1997, Steve Jobs cut the numbers of products in Apple down, in order to keep focus and become successful, which was the first steps Apple took towards creating a blue ocean.
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From now on they would only be producing four different computers; two laptops and two desktops, one for professional and one for personal users in each category. Elimination is the first step in the four-action framework, and this was exactly what Jobs did, when he returned to
Apple. He had meetings with all of the different product and projects teams at Apple, and they all had to explain what they were doing, and justify why he should let them proceed with the product or project. (Isaacson 2011 p.336) Figure 7.1
This way he made the range of products slimmer and focused on the few products the company now produced. Furthermore he demanded, that these products had to be re-designed so they would be simpler to use. This is the second step: to reduce factors that have been over-designed during time in the industry. They were constantly considering if they needed the different functions or parts in a product (Isaacson 2011 p.344).
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One thing Jobs found that had not been overdesigned in the industry was the design of the products. He wanted Apple to design products, which were as beautiful that it almost were art.
This is one of the things Apple did that can be analyzed as the third step. They started to put more focus on aesthetic design of their products. The products should not only be simple to use, but also simple in design. “Less but better”, was the slogan (Isaacson 2011 p.343).
During time Apple has created a lot of new and innovative products and ideas. In 2001 Apple introduced iTunes, because the music industry was missing an easy and cheap way for people to purchase music. (Isaacson 2011 p.382) Short after Apple also introduced the iPod, which made it easy to listen to the digital music, because people no longer had to burn a CD with a playlist on
(Isaacson 2011 p.384).
By changing many these factors mentioned above and probably a lot more, Apple created a value curve that was not similar to other companies’ within the industry.
Identifying a gap in the market between two existing products, in this case the smartphone and the computer, led to the creation of the first iPad in 2010. By looking at two existing products, which are placed in highly competitive markets, or red oceans, and combining and identifying the gap between the two can lead to the creation of a new market or a blue ocean. “We want to kick off 2010, by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product today.” (Appendix 4).
Through the iPad presentation Steve Jobs takes us through and unfolds the steps of creating a blue ocean, in his words by “...introducing a revolutionary product...” (Appendix 4).
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Figure 7.2
The picture above illustrates how Apple has identified two very competitive markets; the smartphone market and the laptop / computer market. Further the middle of the slide explains what a product should be able to deliver if it was to fill the gap between the two markets. By combining the two markets and identifying what lay in between the markets Apple has been able to introduce the iPad thus creating an until now “ unknown and non-existing” blue ocean market; the market for tablets. Apple has however not worked alone trying to identify and introduce a product, which could fill the gap between the smartphones and laptops. Steve Jobs mentioned in the iPad launch that “Now some people have thought, that that’s a Netbook.” (Appendix 4) however as he continues “The problem is Netbooks aren’t better at anything” (Appendix 4). So a different company have already identified the gap in the market-space and tried to launch a product to fill this gap. However the company, according to Jobs, has not succeeded. There is however no limitation in the creation of a blue ocean, which could hinder Apple from learning from other companies’ experiences, and in this case, mistakes.
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The Blue Ocean Strategy elaborates that it is possible to gain vast profits when creating and operating on blue oceans. As Apple is the most valuable brand in the world the success and profit of Apple can be explained by Apple’s ability to create blue ocean markets as the case with the iPad. However working with the Blue Ocean Strategy does not ensure immediate success. It might be possible to create a great product, which can fill a gap between two existing products, but in the end customers have to buy in order to make the product a market success. Thus the success of creating blue oceans can only be measured retrospectively, as it is not possible to foresee the future.
Furthermore the process has not happened overnight. As explained above we believe the blue ocean strategy in Apple’s case began in the late 1990s and has continued with several successful product launches such as the iPod and iPhone up until the iPad. This gives Apple over 10 years of lead. Apple may however have created blue oceans with the introduction of the iPad, but as
Chan Kim and Mauborgne explains; blue oceans will eventually turn red as competitors move into the blue ocean. And as the market for tablets was blue in 2010 we believe that the markets have turned red over the last couple of years. Other companies such as HP and Samsung have introduced tablets, which are cheaper and, some might find, better. As our interviewee Martin
Roll explains: “So if you have an Apple computer, why should you get the iPhone? And if you have the iPhone why should you buy the iPad? And why shouldn’t you buy a different brand?
Because Apple creates new value both for existing customers and for new ones.” (Appendix 3).
In order to continue the success Apple will have to keep innovating and provide new value to its customers. How many times it however is possible to find a new market in between two existing products? Of course the question is impossible to answer however if Apple continues to introduce new products it might come in conflict with the slim product line.
Summary
The first part of the analysis has been used to show how Apple actually communicates their marketing message and how it has become a part of consumer’s perception of Apple products.
Furthermore, we have tried to explain Apple’s success throughout the theory of “The golden
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Circle”. Within this first part of the analysis it has become clear that one of the reasons why
Apple has become the most valuable brand in the world is by using the ”inside-out” technique to convince people to believe what they believe in. Thereby Apple has accomplished to affect the majority of people plus the innovators and early adapters. They will buy the iPad because they share the same belief in “thinking different” and because they want to show the world what they believe in. But as mentioned in the analysis it is important to stress that we do not believe that
Apple only is in the business because they have such strong beliefs about changing the world and this is a critique point of Sinek’s theory. But it is obvious that one of the main reasons for the company’s success is that they have very strong believes in what they do and the company manages to excel in communicating their marketing message.
By creating the iPad Apple also created a blue ocean market. The process of creating a blue ocean market has happened over time, and Apple has been successful in recreating the blue ocean, latest with the iPad. Apple can however not solely claim all the credit in identifying the gap in the marketspace as other companies have made experiences in doing so. Apple however was able to learn from other’s mistakes and deliver what the market expected. Through innovation and delivering what its promises Apple has been able to create a lucrative market position where competition is not the key issue. However the question will stand if it is possible to continue the success without damaging the overall strategy Apple has laid for its product line, namely good but simple.
Flesch Kincaid
From the Flesch Kincaid text analyzing tool we can read that there is 10,78 words in an average sentence, which means that he is not using very long sentences. This makes it easier for his listener to understand his points and keep concentrated.
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Out of all the 3000 words he only uses 196 words that are considered as “hard words”. This way there will not be many words that the average listener does not understand in his presentation.
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is 5th grade and the Flesch Reading Ease is fairly easy: 6th grade. Kids in the 5th and 6th grade will hereby be able to read and understand most of this text.
He does not use a technical or complicated language thus his communication is not aimed at a specific target group such as investors, programmers and others who possess a more technical understanding of the subject than the average person. Due to the easily understandable language he is able to reach out to a larger group of people and thereby getting more people to understand his message. At the same time he does not really loses anything by doing this, because the people who would have understood the presentation even though he had used a more technical language still understand what he is saying. The danger behind using too simple language is that the speaker can lose his authority if the language does not fit the situation, but we do not believe that
Jobs is in danger of that.
We will be using these numbers from the text-analyzing tool further in our discourse analysis and in our argumentation especially in our section about social language.
Semantic field
In our Discourse Analysis we want to make a semantic scheme out of the words Steve Jobs chooses to use in relation to the iPad. We are determined to do this in order to get a deeper understanding of how Steve Jobs is using the language and words to create a certain situation and context and this way convince people that the iPad is a product worth investing money in.
According to James Paul Gee, we adjust the way we speak or write according to the situation and context, but at the same time we can create the situation and context with the way we choose to speak and write. He claims that it is impossible to determine if it was the situation that created the language or the language that created the situation. (Gee, 1999 p.11)
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This we find very essential to our project, because our aim is to reveal why Jobs’ presentations and the iPad was such a big success. The answer to this question consists of many factors, and we think that one of the factors is the way Jobs talked about the iPad.
In his presentation he uses a lot of different words to describe the iPad, but at the same time these words seems similar. Alexander Luria was the first to call this phenomenon a semantic field.
(ILO, May 2012)
A semantic field is a group of words connected by the meaning and/or the relation in a certain way. These connections can be relations of synonymy, antonym, association and opposition.
Together they form a network of meaning that based on the text reveals how a person understands a given situation and reality (Budziszewska, 2009 p.234). This connection and the understanding of the meaning of the words and reality always depend on cultural relations and how you choose to group the words, which therefore also depends on your social and cultural background. As James Paul Gee argues “…the meanings of words are integrally linked to social and cultural groups in ways that transcend individual minds.” (Gee, 1991: 40).
An example on this could be the color white. If a child from Norway was asked to mention some words that come to mind when hearing the word white, it would probably mention snow as one of the words. Whereas a child from Africa probably would not mention snow, because it would have no chance of knowing what snow looks like. Thus people from different cultures and countries will find different meanings in different words.
During our work with the presentation of the iPad we found that it seemed like Jobs was using the same kind of words several times. Thus we decided to investigate this area further. In order to do so, we made a transcription of the presentation, making it easier to work in depth with the text. Below follows a semantic schema we have constructed of the words Jobs chose to use in his presentation:
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Figure 7.3
The semantic fields we have constructed with the words from the presentation consist of the positive adjectives Jobs are using about the iPad. We have also counted how many times the words were used during the presentation. We discovered that many of the words were used several times e.g. he is using the word ‘great’ 16 times. The reason why Jobs is using these words over and over again can of course be seen as an expression of his personality and his social and cultural background, meaning that he chooses to use these exact words, because it is natural to him. Another reason for him to choose these words is as Gee argues, because it fit in the context and situation. The third reason why he chooses to say these exact words is that he is trying to create a certain situation. We are convinced that it is mainly due to the third reason he chooses these words. We believe that he is choosing these words, because he is trying to create a situation where he can convince people that this product is attractive. He is the one creating the situation and controlling it. Gee refers to this as the social language (Gee, 2011 p.28) People use different varieties of language for different purposes. The purpose for repeating the positive adjectives in the presentation is of course to present the product in the best way possible, but also to affect people so that they in the future will associate these words with the iPad and Apple in general.
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Within the social language Gee mentions the pattern of words or grammatical structures. In the presentation there is a obvious pattern between the different adjectives Jobs uses in the description of the iPad. Gee refers to a pattern within types of words as collocation patterns.
(Gee, 2011 p.203)
The pattern of words is a tool for creating a certain situation. The words Jobs uses in the presentation are not only words within the same genre, they are also words that are easy for everyone to understand and relate to. The fact that he uses words such as great, cool, better give us a clear picture of the iPad without really knowing the context, furthermore the choice of words makes the presentation informal and thereby easy for everyone to understand.
Both the social language and collocation patterns in the iPad presentation will be described more through the next part of the analysis.
Discourse Analysis of the Presentation
The text, which is being analyzed, is the transcribed and video launch of the first iPad, which took place in San Francisco January 27th 2010. The launch was one of the most significant events in the technology industry and was expected by people all over the world. In addition, this event had a huge impact on the stock market since Apple is the most valuable brand in the world.
The event was followed worldwide by the media and was accompanied by a lot of excitement.
Furthermore speculation about this new device was discussed and anticipated a considerable period of time before the presentation. As described by the Telegraph: “After months of speculation, the day has finally arrived.” (ILO, May 2012).
This event gives the text a great magnitude, since it has been acknowledged as one of the most important events in the technology branch and has been reviewed internationally.
The main speaker at the event was Steve jobs. Jobs background involves over 40 years in the technology branch, so he was considered as an expert within the branch. This “status” gives his words more validity by the listeners. Furthermore, he contributes substantially to the significance
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of the text since he was the co-founder of Apple and named to be one of the people, who changed the technology branch.
However we have to keep in mind that since he is the founder of Apple and thereby of course has a pretty obvious interest in the success of this product, his view has to be considered as bias.
Jobs start the presentation with a very powerful statement: “We want to kick off 2010, by introducing truly magical revolutionary product today” . (Appendix 4) By using strong terms such as: “to kick off 2010 ”, “truly magical ” and “revolutionary ” Jobs glorifies the event and the iPad and creates an aura of importance for the listeners as a foundation to what he is about to say later in the presentation. By doing that he makes people feel that they are a part of something revolutionary and something that is going to change the world.
Through the presentation Jobs uses words such as “greatest ”, ”extraordinary ”, “unbelievably great “, “wonderful ” , “awesome ”, “remarkable” , “gorgeous ”, “incredible” , “truly magical revolutionary ”, “phenomenal ”. He uses these many positive adjectives in order to emphasize the importance of the iPad and how good it is.
Jobs uses the word “great” 16 times. He wants to stress to the listeners that this product is not only a good product, but it is extremely good in the highest rate.
The iPad is a new product and thereby not something the audience is familiar with. So Jobs has the opportunity to shape and create the idea of this product through language. By constantly repeating the positive adjectives he has the opportunity to influence the audience so they will associate the iPad with these words when leaving the presentation room.
The choice of words are thereby not only a way to describe or share information about the iPad, it is also a tactical way to make people remember it and remembering it the way Apple or Jobs wants people to remember it.
Jobs is sticking to “the rule of three presentations”. The presentation is divided into three parts even though he might have thirty points to make, he is aware of that his audience only is capable
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of retaining three or four points in short term memory. If he had given them too many points they would properly have forgot almost everything he said.
The social practice Jobs is enacting throughout the iPad presentation is “storytelling” In the beginning of the presentation he is catching people up with updating facts of the company and how things started in Apple Inc:
“We started Apple in 1976. 34 years later, we ended our holiday quarter, our first fiscal quarter of 2010 with 15.6 billion dollars of revenue. I don’t even believe that. Now, what that mean is that Apple is an over 50 billion dollar company.” (Appendix 4)
Jobs is giving the “history” of the company a very powerful role, since the audience get reminded on how things were in the past and how we can construct them to happen in the future.
Here we can say that the practice Jobs is engaging is telling the “origins story” and it is a great opportunity to engage within a good deal of social practices.
Jobs is pointing out that Apple is the largest mobile devices company by saying:
“Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world” and “Apple is the number one mobile devices company in the world.” (Appendix 4) The second time he is using the term
“number one” . Here Jobs can be understood as talking about Apple as the largest mobile devices company in the world, but also the best one, which is his own opinion. Jobs is using facts and mixing them with his own view so the listeners can understand his opinion as a fact. Jobs is using this way of communicating several times throughout the presentation, he claims for instance that: “Apple actually invented the first modern laptop computer” (Appendix 4) , which sounds like an established fact but actually there is no clear definition for what a modern laptop is. Jobs expresses his own view in a way that can be interpreted by the listeners as if he is representing information that is based on existing facts.
The same appears when Jobs states that: “the great iPhone 3GS – the best phone in the world.”
He asserts that the iPhone 3GS is the best phone in the world in spite of the fact that there can be
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many different parameters and views upon what makes a phone the best. He shares his own view in a way as if he was presenting existing data.
Through the presentation Jobs communicate his view regarding what he sees as the “best phone” or the “number one company”, basing on his opinion and point of view. In addition he also makes claims on competing companies. During two different parts of his presentation he is comparing the iPad to the Netbook and states: “… Netbooks aren’t better at anything, they are slow, they have low quality displays and they run clunky old PC software. So, they are not better than a laptop at anything, they are just cheaper. They are just cheap laptops.” (Appendix 4).
And furthermore: “… That is thinner and lighter than any netbook”. Additionally Jobs claims that the iPad is: "way better than a laptop, way better than a smartphone." He is also making a specific comparison with the Netbook and by doing that he is making sure to leave the listeners without any doubts that the iPad is the best.
Besides comparing the iPad with the Netbook, he is also comparing Apple with other companies.
First he says that Apple is the largest mobile devices company and then he continues with claiming that Apple is bigger than Sony, Samsung and Nokia. He states:
“…it turns out that by revenue Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world now.
It’s amazing. Apple is larger than Sony mobile devices business, selling great camcorders and digital cameras and stuff that they make. It’s bigger than Samsung’s mobile devices business, with all their handsets that they sell. And by revenue it’s even bigger than Nokia’s mobile devices business, with all the handsets that they sell. Apple is the number one mobile devices company in the world.” (Appendix 4).
Steve Jobs’ use of language helps him to create a certain role as speaker. When having in mind the extent of the event and the amount of people worldwide that have been waiting to see the first glimpse of this new device, you would probably expect a more formal speak from Jobs. This is however not the case. Through Jobs’ role at the presentation, which he is partly creating through language, he manages to create a relaxed and friendly atmosphere.
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Jobs choose to use words, which are easy to understand. Words such as “cool”, ”super”,
“ awesome” which maybe is not expected from a man in his fifties, but it is remarkable simple, clear and direct and everyone is able to understand him. Jobs could have used terms like
“proprietary process”, “integration” etc. but if he had chosen to use agency speaking while presenting, the majority of the audience would not understand his message.
The iPad is a device for everyone and this is also something Jobs wants people to understand; this he makes visible through his language. When showing what the iPad is capable at, he also comes up with some suggestions for when to use it:
“ Want to buy some tickets to a movie? Grab the tablet, that's in the kitchen. Go to Fandango on your iPad and buy your tickets” or “I’m gonna type in sushi and we should find all the sushi places nearby. And again I can just tap on a pin to find one. Here we go. Here is ’’Sushi boat’’.
So I wanna go find that one after this presentation, maybe get some lunch” (Appendix 4).
Everywhere people find tickets for a movie on the internet or look up a place to get lunch, so
Jobs by using these as examples, he makes it easier for the audience to see how the iPad could fit into their lives; he makes it more relatable. Furthermore he several times claims how easy it is to use the iPad. So not only can it be used by everyone, it can easily be used by everyone, also people without any further technical knowledge: “It’s that simple to do email on the iPad” or
“It’s very very simple and adapts to the way I wanna use it” (Appendix 4).
Furthermore Jobs’ use of the simple language, contributes to the idea about how easy it is to use the iPad. If he had used an advanced technical language that could have contradicted the statements about how easy it is to use.
During the presentation Jobs is showing a sequence from the movie UP in order to show how video works on the iPad. Before showing the sequence he claims that this is one of his favorite movies: “take another movie that I love, which is UP. Awesome movie. And one of my favorite
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sequences ever in any movie, is this sequence in UP right here” (appendix 4) The fact that he shares this information about himself, takes the speech to a more personal level and contributes again to the non-official atmosphere. Furthermore is his tone throughout the entire presentation very conversational and this contributes to the audience’s experience of his authentic self.
As a presenter, your biggest goal is to connect with your audience and it is obvious that Steve
Jobs succeeds every time. The connection with the audience throughout the entire presentation is extremely important because you cannot persuade, motivate or sell anything without making a connection first.
One of the ways Steve Jobs is connecting with his audience within the presentation is by including relevant facts.
“10 hours of battery life, So it means I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole way on one charge it’s pretty nice. And in addition to 10 hours of battery life, it has over a month of standby life.” “What that mean is that Apple is an over 50 billion dollar company.” (Appendix 4).
Jobs always put large numbers into his context that is relevant to his audience and he also manages to make numbers meaningful to every listener.
Steve Jobs wants the audience to get the full experience of this new device at the presentation. It seems like that if he could, he would like all of the participants to try the iPad. However he tries to give the audience the full experience by his use of language. Several times he includes the audience in the presentation, by “asking” them: “Isn’t that wonderful?” , “Isn’t this great?”,
”Isn’t that awesome?" , “Isn’t it incredible?", “Isn’t that cool? " and "Isn’t that nice?
”
(Appendix 4) By doing this he again contributes to the friendly and relaxed setting.
Furthermore, the six questions he asks are rhetorical questions. A rhetorical question is: " a question asked solely to produce an effect or to make an assertion and not to elicit a reply".
(ILO, May 2012) Jobs repeating this motive, illustrates his attempt to affect the listeners opinion in a way that could be interpreted by them as if Jobs is having a conversation with them.
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Jobs mentions several times that the things he shows are of course great, but it is nothing like having the iPad in the palm of your own hands. “So, I have to say though watching it is nothing, like getting one in your hands. Feeling all that right in your hands, right underneath your fingertips.” Here he contributes to the audience’s experience of the iPad by trying to share the entire experience with the participants.
The fact that his identity as a speaker is relaxed and friendly and that he shares personal information such as his favorite video on YouTube and uses everyday words such as cool and awesome makes him look like a sympathetic man and this just contributes to the friendly relationship he creates with the listeners. By doing this he comes out to more people and thereby also makes the iPad attractive to a broader crowd.
Discourse Analysis Summary
This second part of the analysis is the discourse analysis of the iPad presentation. During our discourse analysis we found that Steve Jobs is using many different tools in his spoken as well as body language, and the settings of the presentation in order to both to create the idea of the iPad before introducing it subsidiary of course to sell the iPad and the idea about it to as many people as possible. We found by using the Flesch Kincaid text-analyzing tool that the words Jobs used and the way he structured his sentences was easy to read and understand, and you do not have to have a higher education, or be in the know, to be able to understand the meaning. When looking at the text with a qualitative approach namely by making a semantic field and a discourse analysis we found that Steve Jobs are using the words, the way he says the words, his charisma and the settings of the scene to present the iPad and Apple the best way possible. He does it in a way so he gets people attention because he seems authentic, reliable and understandable during the presentation.
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Sub-conclusion
Throughout our project we have used different theories and tools to investigate how Apple conducts marketing. By using the Blue Ocean Strategy to analyze how Apple has created new products, which are value-innovative by focusing on some of the same strategies as presented in the Blue Ocean Strategy. We were however convinced that the success of Apple was not only caused by producing products, which filled an empty market space. Thus we decided to investigate how they market their products. We have used the iPad presentation as a case to investigate what we assumed to be a vital part of Apple’s marketing strategy in order to make general assumptions. We acquired the skills to make a discourse analysis of the presentation.
This analysis pointed in the direction of that Steve Jobs aimed at creating an idea about the iPad.
We found that he was trying to send the message of how wonderful a product he believes the iPad is to his listeners.
By combining our discourse analysis discoveries with the theory of the Golden Circle we can tell how Apple and Steve Jobs use a specific communication technique to deliver this message to the listeners at the presentation.
In this chapter we will sum up our analytical findings and answer our problem definition.
Our problem definition states:
How did the iPad and its marketing message help Apple to become the most valuable brand in the world?
Before going into depth with our problem definition we looked into how Apple has developed as a company over the years. We discovered that the success leading to Apple becoming the most valuable brand in the world started over 10 years ago. At that time, one of the co-founders of
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Apple Steve Jobs, returned to Apple as CEO. The stock value of Apple increased substantially in that period.
So what did Apple do? We discovered that the Blue Ocean Strategy fits what Apple has done over the years. Firstly Apple streamlined the product-line in the early 2000s concentrating on creating a few but good products. Secondly even though the market for computers at the time was highly competitive, Apple started to focus on different parameters than the industry standards. Looking into the iPad other key points from the Blue Ocean Strategy seems to fit. By defining a gap between two existing markets and identifying what a product should be able to deliver in order to fill this gap, simply called value-innovation, Apple was able to create a product, in this case the iPad, and create and operates on the market in between or a blue ocean market. Apple can however not claim the right to the success alone. As Steve Jobs mentioned
“Now some people have thought, that that’s a Netbook.” (Appendix 4). Ergo someone besides
Apple have identified the gap and tried, but failed, to launch a product which would fill the gap between the two existing markets.
The Blue Ocean Strategy points out that in order to make the strategy work a company will have to educate its customers. Customers always want more for less. So how do you convince and educate your customers that they should buy a product, which is not necessarily cheaper or able to perform more. According to one of our other theories, the Golden Circle Theory, a company has to both identify how and what they do but most important why they do it. If a company is able to identify and communicate these three factors a company can differentiate itself from other companies and get a first advantage in the battle for market-shares. We decided to use the presentation of the first iPad from 2010 in order to be able to formulate a general hypothesis of how Apple communicate and brand their products, and why the strategy seems to be more successful than other companies. We chose this exact presentation because it was a presentation of a completely new product, which we believe succeeded in creating a blue ocean: a market for tablets. By making the discourse analysis of the 2010 iPad presentation we discovered that Apple
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through the presentation tried to create an idea about the iPad in the listeners heads before presenting the main event of the presentation: the product. And by doing this in their presentations of their products Apple creates an idea of what kind of company. Apple is and what they believe in.
The presenter Steve Jobs creates a trustworthy atmosphere and he seems authentic because he is using simple words and sentences. Jobs is also uses techniques, which gave the listeners personal relations to him, and thereby they find the information more relevant for themselves.
It seems fairly easy to implement different strategies thus creating the opportunity for your company to become the most valuable brand in the world. However the element of timing and luck has to be mentioned. Apple may have created a new and for them revolutionary product, but in the end if customers do not buy the product then you have not created a success but a failure.
The blue ocean strategy may give you tools to success, but it is and the strategy has to be combined with good communication, if you want consumers to adapt the product.
By creating the iPad, Apple succeed in creating a new product that did not already exist (at least not the way we know it) in the industry. The iPad filled a gap in the existing market-space between two existing products and thereby created a blue ocean between two red oceans.
During the launch of the iPad, Apple convinced consumers that the iPad is a product that is worth buying, especially if you see yourself and the world the same way Apple does. We believe that the above mentioned point are some of the most important elements in the success of the iPad and explains why the iPad was able to help Apple to become the most valuable brand in the world
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When a company become the most valuable brand in the world what is the next step?
Are there limits to growth?
Through our project we have limited our self to look at Apple generally and not go into how
Apple differentiates from market to market. From our interviews we learned that Apple at least has been able to be successful in the western world. “At least in the the western world. And starting to work in eastern Europe and Russia and perhaps China as well.” (Appendix 2). If
Apple has focused on selling products on the western markets perspectives of growth may be found in Russia and Asia. The globalization, which may have contributed to Apple being successful in both the USA and Europe, continue, the new markets may open further towards western products. The globalization has previous lead to Europe copying the American lifestyle.
The future may lead to the consumers of Russia, Asia a.o., wanting to copy the western lifestyle.
If so Apple may find grounds for further expansion within these markets.
One of the big ifs of the future is the managerial change, which has occurred upon the death of former CEO Steve Jobs. As one of our interviewees explains “He (Steve Jobs) has been the heart of Apple’s branding. He has personalized the entire idea of Apple” (Appendix 1). For now
Apple has only had one major project launch since the new CEO was appointed, and only the future will tell if the success will continue. The new CEO Tim Cook will however have to find his own way and define himself differently than Steve Jobs. Complimented for his passion and authenticity Steve Jobs was a powerful and trustworthy ambassador for Apple. If Tim Cook copies Steve Jobs consumers may find that the brand of Apple loses its authenticity, thus damaging the brand value.
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Apple has become the most valuable brand in the world by creating and selling some of the most innovative products the world has ever seen but has this been a picture perfect business story and what challenges lie ahead in order for Apple to stay on top?
If we ask the Godfather of Google’s mobile operating system Android and vice-president for engineering at Google Andy Rubin the road to success certainly has not as bright as Apple wish to present it. Rubin goes as far as comparing Apple with the closed-off dictatorship North Korea
(ILO, May 2012). This comparison was made back in 2010 when Jobs still was the CEO of
Apple.
At that time North Korea had Kim Jong-Il as their supreme leader, exercising complete governmental control and trying to manipulate the population to think what Jong-Il wants them to, Rubin claims that Jobs has this role at Apple. Jobs is always the one presenting the products using a brainwash choice of words (amazing, world’s most advanced etc.), letting no mistakes slide and not only denying an antenna problem with the iPhone 4 (and telling the iPhone 4 owners to stop holding it the wrong way) (ILO, May 2012), but also accusing the supplier RIM, a company that specializes in antenna design and wireless data, of being the source of the problem.
However, RIM answered back saying that it is a design fault from Apple themselves and there has been no issues on Blackberrys using the same antenna design (ILO, May 2012).
The ‘dictatorship’ of Apple is also shown in their products. There is a lack of personalization opportunities with the iPhone only allowing the user self to make a very limited amount of changes. Every detail is controlled by Apple and the owner is not even allowed to make a battery change or add their own SD card, opportunities that most of the competitors offer with their smartphone. A challenge that could lie ahead for Apple is their strict attitude towards their apps store.
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While Google has an open-end app store allowing the developers to produce what they want and letting the owner buy and view as they wish, Apple exercises censorship towards their customers when blocking apps that have a competitive nature against Apple products and political apps etc.
It seems like Apple is forgetting what is the best interest of the user by practicing a one way street. It’s the Apple way or no way as we saw when Apple decided to give the cold shoulder to flash player and java excluding them from the Apple ecosystem (ILO, May 2012).
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Interview 1: Hanne Feldthus (HF), self employed communication advisor and strategic
Manager Wibroe, Duckert & Patners. (Relevant parts transcribed)
Os : Tak fordi du vil deltage. Jamen vores første spørgsmål lyder, hvordan firmaer normalt kommunikerer deres budskab ud, når de skal brande?
HF : Jamen typisk, hvis det er et forbruger produkt. Så vil man typisk lave en eller anden reklame kampagne, hvis produktet ligesom har volumen nok til det. Og lidt afhængig af hvilken produkt kategori, vil man eventuelt vælge tv. En eller anden tv kampagne, og så have noget... Altså det kommer meget an på, hvor mange penge firmaet har, og hvor stor potentialet er og sådan noget.
Men altså de der klassiske massemedier som tv, outdoor, print annoncer i aviser og magasiner og en form for online eksponering. Det kommer helt an på, hvad det er for et produkt.
Os : Ja...
HF : Men det vil være den klassiske måde at gøre produktet kendt på. Det er jo ligesom den første opgave, at gøre folk opmærksomme på, at produktet findes.
Os : Men sådan i forhold til det normale her, hvordan mener du så, at Apples branding og kommunikation skiller sig fra Apples konkurrenter? Hvis den gør det?
HF : Det gør den jo fordi de (Apple) har lavet den strategi, at deres (Apples) produkter skal være så særegne. Produkterne skal se så lækre ud og kunne noget andre produkter ikke kan. Så de har bygget meget af hele attraktionen ved brandet ind i produktet. Og derved adskiller de sig fra mange andre virksomheder, som typisk gør minde ud af den side af sagen. Det kommer
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selvfølgelig lidt an på... I gamle dage var det jo lidt det samme med B&O. De byggede også enorm meget design-værdi ind i deres produkter ikke? Det gjorde, at folk bare kiggede på produkterne, blev begejstret og købte produkterne. Der findes selvfølgelig andre virksomheder end Apple, som gør det samme, men der findes ingen i verden, som har været så dygtige til at bygge selve attraktionen ind i produktet som Apple. Det er simpelthen en dims, som mange gerne vil have.
Os : Så man køber også en attraktion eller en oplevelse...?
HF : Ja ja, du køber... Udover at købe noget som er funktionelt, så køber du også et produkt der kan noget specielt, og ser ud på en speciel måde. Og det er jo det, der har adskilt Apple fra alle andre, fordi de har været så sindsygt dygtige til at bygge hele brandet ind i produktet. For de har jo også kørt reklame kampagner og alt muligt andet, men der er så meget værdi i selve brandet, at produkterne ofte har spadseret meget af sig selv.
Os : Hvad med i forhold til det budskab de kommunikerer ud, er der forskel på, hvad de... Jeg tænker på, at man hører dem ikke sige “Vores computere er bedre end andres...”. Jeg tænker på selve budskabet i deres branding i forhold til andre?
HF : Du kan sige... I stedet for at lave lange lister over hvor mange ram, bitz, bytes og hvad det nu hedder, eller hvad det nu hedder, har de taget en mere filosofisk tilgang til branding, som hedder overordnet “Think Different”. Altså. Og den der reklame kampagne de kørte omkring
årtusind skiftet, dengang Steve Jobs kom tilbage, hvor man så billeder af Ghandi, Martin Luther
King og Beatles og hvad ved jeg, den anslog jo ligesom den nye æra i Apple. Vi tænker anderledes, og hvis vi deler det med vores kerne målgruppe, som også tænker anderledes, og vi viser noget anderledes, ved at vores produkter ser anderledes ud.
Os : Så folk ligesom identificerer sig med produkterne? Eller hvordan?
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HF : Ja både det og selve ideen. Altså Apple er jo en ide. Ikke? Og ideen kan udtrykkes i meget kort form nemlig “think different”. Den udmønter de så i nogle produkter der har en design kvalitet og en intuitiv brugervenlig flade. Som gør at mennesker oplever, at ja de tænker sørme anderledes end andre producenter af computere, tablets og mp3 afspillere og så videre. Du behøver kun at fatte det overordnet budskab. Du behøver ikke forstå de underliggende features ved produkterne.
Os : Hvis man kigger på deres præsentationer. Deres produkt præsentationer. Der er det jo ret atypisk i forhold til andre teknologi firmaer, at fx nyhedsmedierne sidder med på forreste række til de her præsentationer, og det er en stor nyhed, når Apple lancerer nye produkter. Hvordan mener du, at Apple har brugt de her præsentationer til at brande sig selv?
HF : De har jo været sindsyge dygtige. Og med de er det jo i virkeligheden Steve Jobs. Altså.
Han fik bygget en tradition for at hans eller Apples produkter er noget særligt. Det startede vel i virkeligheden med den første iMac computer, tror jeg den hedder. Den der blå satan de lavede.
Og den så så anderledes ud i forhold til andre computere på markedet. Og så fik han bygget et hype. Han brugte jo to dage på at sætte lys på for at se, hvordan lyset så ud og faldt, når man tog klædet af, der til præsentationerne. Det, at han har investeret så mange penge i sine produktpræsentationer, og det, at hans produkter altid, eller i de fleste gange, var så anderledes, at der var noget at komme efter. Problemet ved mange andre virksomheder er, at deres produkter ofte ikke er specielt ekseptionelle. Det kan godt være, at de gerne vil præsentere dem for pressen og alle mulige andre, og også prøver at gøre det, men de kan ligesom ikke skabe den hype, for produkterne er ikke specielle nok til at man gider møde op vel?
Os : Så hvordan mener du, at Steve Jobs rolle har været i deres branding strategi?
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HF: Han har været hjertet i Apples branding. Han har personificeret hele ideen bag Apple. Her har vi et brand med en ide, og her er manden med ideen. Han har betydet alt for den virksomhed.
Han har betydet alt for det brand. Fordi han var så... Altså han gik aldrig nogenside på kompromis med noget som helst. Alt skulle være perfekt. Og det har betalt sig i sidste ende, for det har folk og pressen meget stor respekt for.
Os : Er der så nogen, der kan overtage den rolle? Kan Tim Cook fx overtage Steve Jobs rolle?
HF : Altså basalt set kan han jo ikke blive til Steve Jobs. Han er jo nødt til... Hvis han skal lykkedes med det, og det håber vi da virkelig, at han gør, men det mangler vi jo stadig at se at det lykkedes ikke? Så skal han (Tim Cook) jo gøre det på sin egen måde. Altså fordi det der var med
Steve Jobs, var, at han var så 100% autentisk. Han stod for noget, og det udlevede han hvert sekund i døgnet. Og iøvrigt var manden jo bindegal. Men han var gennemført autentisk i sin måde at gøre tingene på. Hvis Tim Cook skal gøre det samme, så er han nødt til at finde ind til sin egen måde at gøre tingene på i fremtiden. For ellers bliver det ikke autentisk, men bare en dårlig kopi af Steve Jobs. Det er jo ikke optimalt.
Os : Den her autentiske præsentationsform som har været med Steve Jobs og Apple, mener du, at det har været med til at skabe de her loyale kunder, som Apple besidder?
HF : Det har været med til at skabe auraen omkring produkterne. Men hvis produkterne ikke havde levet op til, hvad man forventede af dem, så får du ikke loyale kunder. Det hele begynder og slutter med produktet. Han (Steve Jobs) har så brugt sig selv som talsmand for produkterne.
Hvor andre køber en eller anden kendis eller filmstjerne eller et eller andet, og køber sig til noget opmærksomhed. Så brugte han (Steve Jobs) sig selv. Og det kunne han gøre, fordi han var så karismatisk et menneske, og han var så autentisk, som han var. Det der også var så interessant ved ham, var, at han altid har optrådt i det samme tøj som sine kunder. Masser af erhvervsledere går jo rundt i jakkesæt, manchetknapper og hvide skjorter for ligesom at se signende ud. De taler
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jo mere til aktiemarkederne. Til de finansielle markeder. Hvor Steve Jobs han hele tiden var garanten for, at det var ham der sagde god for et produkt, og som almindelig menneske kunne man identificere sig med ham, og man vidste, at det havde han også styr på.
Os : Virker den form for strategi på et globalt plan?
HF : Det virker jo i hvert fald i den vestlige verden. Om det virker nede i Afrika, skal jeg ikke sige mig klog på. Men i hele den vestlige verden har alle folk jo taget den tanke gang og ide bag
Apple til sig. Så det gør den bestemt. Jeg synes det er lidt sjovt og interessant med de mennesker, som bruger sig selv. Hvis vi nu tager lille Danmark, så er der jo ikke så mange herhjemme. Men vi havde jo Simon Spies engang ikke? Som også brugte sig selv som markedsføre af sin virksomhed og af sit brand. Og vi har Lars Larsen, som gør det samme. Det er jo enormt, enormt effektivt, når virksomheden på en eller anden måde hænger så godt samme med grundlæggeren, at grundlæggeren eller idemanden bliver virksomhedens bedste talsmand.
Os : Set fra virksomhedens synspunkt kan det vel også være en risiko. Nu er Steve Jobs jo død, men Simon Spies, du taler om, lavede jo en del skandaler...
HF : Det tilgiver folk jo. Simon Spies kunne jo gøre, hvad helved han ville. Folk tilgav ham jo, fordi han gav folk og almindelige mennesker muligheden for at komme til “de varme lande” om man så må sige. Det havde folk jo ikke haft mulighed for før. Så tilgav man ham, fordi han gjorde noget godt for sine kunder. Det er det, der er så interessant. Steve Jobs gjorde noget godt for sine kunder, fordi han gav dem fantastiske produkter. Og Simon Spies gjorde noget godt for sine kunder, fordi han var en af de første herhjemme, der sendte folk på rejser til en pris de kunne betale, og han gav sine kunder muligheden for at opleve noget generationen før ikke kunne opleve. Og så gør det ikke så meget. Der er jo altid en risiko. Men man kan jo også hyre en skuespiller til at stå i spidsen for sit brand, og så bliver den skuespiller taget med kokain eller
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noget. Så der er jo altid en risiko ved at binde et brand op til en person. Meget ofte er den risiko absolut værd at tage, fordi det er så effektivt, når det virker.
Os : Tror du så også, at det er samme grund... Nu har Apple jo brugt fx kinesiske arbejdere, der har haft dårlige forhold, hvor det ikke har været pustet så meget op i medierne, som det kunne være. Kan det have noget at gøre med, at man har et “forhold” til brandet og derfor tilgiver fejlene?
HF : En ting er at Simon Spies selv lavede nogle skandaler, og havde nogle morgenbolledamer, og hvad han nu havde gang i. Det var ligesom hans excentriske stil, og det tilgav man ham. Og det at Steve Jobs var excentrisk, tilgav man ham. Men hvis man gentagne gange hører, at de mennesker, der laver produkter lever under kummerlige vilkår eller noget, og det hele er helt forfærdeligt, så får brandet nogle ordentlige ridser i lakken.
Os : Så du mener ikke, at brandet er stærkt nok til mange af den slags sager?
HF : Det er der forhåbenligt ikke nogen brands, der er. For så er der jo ingen ret og rimelighed tilbage. Brandet er nødt til at være ordentligt, hvis det skal have loyale kunder. Men altså Apple har jo en enorm goodwill, så folk kaster sig ikke frådende over dem lige med det samme. Men hvis sagerne bliver ved med at dukke op... Det er der ingen virksomheder, der kan overleve.
Os : Det var egentlig, hvad vi havde af spørgsmål.
HF : Ok.
Os : Tak fordi du ville deltage. Du har været en stor hjælp.
HF : Jeg er glad for, at jeg kunne hjælpe.
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Interview 2: with Helene D. S. Schmidt (HDSS), Self-employed Strategic and
Communication Advisor. (Relevant parts transcribed)
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Us: Thank you for helping by participating in this interview. We would like to talk a bit about branding and communication. What is the usual message a company communicates when having to brand itself?
HDSS : Well the usual message is: “Hey look at us and our products. Buy!”. Of course this depends on the company and product in question. If the company is small, medium or large and if the product is... well expensive or cheap or common or niche product. The message always remains the same: “Buy”. Its business.
Us: So it is the product type that ultimately decides the strategy?
HDSS : Definitely. It all boils down to the product. If you produce a cheap TV you want as many people as possible to buy it and you want it to be as exposed as possible. If you produce a high end design TV you might want to target a specific group to be exposed in different way. Of course the seize of your company decides what sort of exposure the company can afford. Tvadds, magazine commercials and so on. But it all depends on the product and what sort of exposure the idea behind the product is in need of. Regularly will employ strategist or outsource the job of communication and branding to a specialist company. But the strategy is always to create attention around the company and the products.
Us: Does Apple use a particular over all branding strategy?
HDSS : Apple probably has several strategists employed to take care of that part of business.
Well when the company is the seize of Apple and competes on a very competitive market it is difficult to only focus one strategy. Apple is today market leading and probably want to stay that way so thats one area of focus. But they still have to produce new products. The thing about
Apple is that Apple is... Well the company has a very limited product line. When Apple produces
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a computer they offer you maybe two or three models and thats it. Two or three models that will suit your need no matter who you are. Either a laptop or desktop. Simple and easy. Where different companies gives you almost unlimited choices. The same with the iPhone. One phone.
Simple. And the tablet... The iPad. One and simple. The overall strategy could be “less is more”.
Consumers don’t need a 100 different computers, if the choice of one or two can fulfill your requirements or give you more. And when you offer, like Apple, a few well-define products people are more likely to buy and be satisfied. And the circle will reinforce itself. The products are interconnected I believe. We talk about different products and not necessarily the same consumers, but when you own one Apple the chance of you buying an other is high. Even in a very competitive market.
Us: And the technology market is...
HDSS : Very competitive but Apple was there first. All the time. First with cool computers. First with the phone-slash-computer. And first with the tablet. For a strategy point of view its very good or lucky to be first because there are no competitors and all the costumers you gather whilst your are are alone on the market has a tendency to stick around. Especially if you take good care of your costumers. If you are looking for one single strategy you can look at the Blue Ocean
Strategy. The blue ocean simply divides the markets into two different markets: one red and one blue. The red has competition and the blue doesn’t. The thing is that a market can’t stay blue forever. Other companies will steal your ideas and most likely change their products to fit the blue and attractive market. But if a company is able to create a value appreciated by the consumers the company will have a head start when the blue market turns red. Value is the key word here.
Us: And Apple...
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HDSS : Apple has been eminent at doing this. They have been able to create ground breaking products and also to keep consumers interested when other companies started to produce similar products. And Apple has... how can I explain it... Been eminent at putting value into all aspects of the products: the design, user-friendly and so on. So the blue ocean strategy doesn’t work as a overall branding strategy but as a product branding strategy. Business will always be business.
Making money. So is it for Apple. If they didn’t have any focus on that they would never have made it to be the worlds most valuable company. But as long as they are first they do not have to worry that much about competition like other companies. For regular companies the only differentiator in this field is price. Apple however competes on other areas than price as you know. But they have to take care of their brand and that includes the products.
Us: When Apple introduces a new product they usually have a product presentation. How do you find they use the iPad or iPhone presentations?
HDSS : As a part of their branding strategy. And the funny thing here is that it is not the usual...
Hmmm nerds or shall we call them top fans present at the presentation. It is the world media.
Isn’t it fascinating? The hype around the products is phenomenal and almost everyone spring into self-oscillation. And thats not something that happened overnight but it is a well planned brand strategy and the process really started when Steve Jobs returned in the early 2000s. I don’t remember exactly when. But he went into all parts of Apple: the innovation, the making, the presenting, the selling and the identity. Jobs became Apple or was Apple.
Us: Can Steve Jobs be replaced?
HDSS : Well no... I don’t suppose they have an extra Steve Jobs somewhere. What made Steve
Jobs the person he was, was his authenticity. And he kept Apple under strict control. I believe he had five or six persons close to him. His disciples. They were trained you can say to follow Jobs’ vision and to be able follow him if he were to leave Apple some day. Or... well die. So the vision
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or the idea is intact for now. But Steve Jobs was the personification of Apple. Remember how news of his death was received? The point is that the vision and the idea behind the product continues but the front person is new. We still have to wait and see how the new CEO will manage that challenge. If you take the presentations with Tim Cook it seems like he, or his clothes, has changed from the CEO type to the, what should we call it, Steve Jobs type. You know black shirt and jeans. I don’t know if it was planned, but usually the presentations are planned to the last detail, so why not his look as well? For now it might work to sort of copy
Steve Jobs style, but in the long run he will have to find his own path and style. He cannot become Steve Jobs. He has to be his own if the brand has to stay authentic and real.
Us: So do consumers buy the Apple brand or product?
HDSS : You wouldn’t have one without the other. And if you produce an inferior product you get an inferior brand. It only works if the product is brilliant. The key factor is the user experience through all stages of the product. The buying, the using and the ownership. When one part of the experience suffers the entire brand suffers. Even if the stage isn’t directly under the company’s control. Its here Apple has been amazing at taking control of every stage. They control the branding and marketing, you can only buy Apple products at certain stores and so on.
And the presentations we talked about before? Controlled to the last detail.
Us: Do you mean that it is important to regain control over all the stages you mention? A sort of product or brand control?
HDSS : Not brand control but brand dictatorship. It sounds bad but it works. The Apple brand is as much the story and vision as the product. If you tell the same story to everyone it will become stronger. It sounds easy but it is not. Because if you fail to deliver at one of the stages, as I said, the entire brand will suffer. Also you have to be careful conducting your dictatorship. The control can be a great risk as well if some one at some point see the control as evil.
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Us: Evil?
HDSS : Yes. By control you always exclude some and some will have to choose side.
Us: What do you find is Apple’s biggest strength as a brand?
HDSS : Apple products are for every one. The student, the manager, the pensioner, everyone.
There are no boundaries in the segmentation in regards of age and gender and even country. You can see commercials for the iPhone both in business magazines, regular news papers and so on.
Us: So the strategies work on a global level?
HDSS : At least in the the western world. And starting to work in eastern Europe and Russia and perhaps China as well. For Apple the main concern has been the western well. To their luck consumers from Russia and China seek to look western. So they buy Apple. I think that Apple are especially interested in China. They have for some time payed a lot of attention to the replica market in China where some copy Apple stores started to show. So maybe thats the future market?
Us: Do you think there is something else worth mentioning regarding the branding strategies of
Apple?
HDSS : I think it has to be said that the concept of brand always has to be seen in connection with the product you offer. If your brand is just your logo on an ordinary product, then the brand wont manifest into a deeper level. All levels of the experience has to be coherent.
Us: Thank you for participating.
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HDSS : Glad I could help.
Interview 3: Martin Roll (MR), Self employed business strategist and thought leader.
(Relevant parts transcribed)
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This interview was conducted via e-mail and is organized into relevant questions-and-answers.
The original e-mails are available upon request.
Us: Looking into business and branding strategies can you explain if there is a difference between normal branding strategies and branding strategies of a top brand like Apple?
MR: Normal branding is what we see every day. Its commercials. We don’t really notice them but we know they are there and that they have a message for us. Is a brand of milk important?
Not really. You buy it and if you are picky or have a specific set of values you choose ecological, biodynamic and so forth. But summed the most important value for the costumer is the taste.
Top brands branding differs in the way that they use the brand value to conduct marketing. You mention Apple, which isn’t just a top brand but THE top brand. Apple does nothing which can challenge the brand. Its possible to look into the Apple brand from four pillars. I have included the four pillars from an article I wrote.
Constant innovation: Apple has emerged as one of the pioneers in the consumer electronics industry. Innovation and efficient commercialization of those new products have helped Apple to constantly excite customers and to enhance their loyalty.
Competitive strategy: As the number of fronts in which any company has to fight competitors increases, conventional strategies of market competition may not serve the best purposes.
Consistent communication: One of the fundamental aspects of a strong brand is its CEO being the staunchest brand ambassador.
Connecting with customer touch points: Apple has established a seamless experience for customers across online, mobile and personal touch points. The Apple Store is the physical and digital manifestation of the brand. In addition to displaying all Apple products in a sleek environment, the stores offer training workshops to potential customers, conduct gatherings for existing customers and generally offer engaging and exciting experiences for customers who want to interact with the Apple brand.
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To sum it: the branding is closely linked to the company’s overall strategy and vice versa. And the company can not slack.
Us: Does the strategy you mention create loyal customers?
MR: In Apple’s case it has. Whats interesting here is that Apple being the most valuable brand in the world to some extent has to sell to customers who are Apple owners beforehand. So if you have an Apple computer, why should you get the iPhone? And if you have the iPhone why should you buy the iPad? And why shouldn’t you buy a different brand? Because Apple creates new value both for existing costumers and for new ones.
Us: Why does other companies just implement the pillars you mention in order to achieve the same success as Apple?
MR: It might seem easy but it isn’t. You have to get all pillars just right in order to achieve success. And for Apple it has taken years. It started with a slim lining of the products. And many years of innovation. Other companies have to have the same equity as Apple to be able to endure years of innovation, branding, etc. in order to gain success. Most, if they tried, would end up unsuccessful. And you have to do what you say and say what you do. When Apple say they have a revolutionary product they always have a revolutionary product.
Us: When you have become the world’s most valuable brand: Whats left?
MR: Surviving and not letting your company stagnate. From Apple’s point of view especially stagnation is a lurking danger. Apple can survive for a long time due to their enormous capital holdings. Apple survive on the other hand on a very simple and narrow product line. When they launch a new product it has to be in line with the philosophy “simple” and still be ground breaking in order to use the “hype-factor” surrounding Apple. Look at the last iPhone and iPad presentation. A new groundbreaking phone was expected but wan’t delivered. The same with the
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iPad. Something extraordinary was expected but only sort of delivered. If Apple doesn’t deliver when it is expected then they can not use the attention around the products to their benefit.
Eventually the hype will disappear and Apple will be just a company.
Whats interesting about the recent iPad presentation I just mentioned is that it marked a change in Apple. It was the first product launch since CEO Steve Jobs’ death. The new CEO Tim Cook introduced an already existing product, but take notice of the name “the new iPad”. The new
CEO and the new iPad. Not the iPad 3 or iPad HD but the new iPad. It wasn’t new but “the kings new suit”. However the presentation marked the sift from “old” to “new”, and it was emphasized in the choice of the name.
Us: Do you then believe that there will be a notable difference in Apple with Tim Cook as CEO?
MR: If not the company will loose. Tim Cook isn’t Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was the incarnation of
Apple in human form. Tim Cook isn’t. If Tim Cook just copy Steve Jobs, Cook will loose. Tim
Cook has to show who he is and that he, hopefully, has the same devotion to Apple as Steve Jobs has. But Tim Cook has to show it his’ way. Does Apple need a crazy figurehead? I don’t think so. But it helps. Steve Jobs was the brand ambassador. He was there when it began and he was devoted till his death. However if Apple can continue to be a pioneer and not care about competitors and if Tim Cook can include more people in the executive team, AND if Apple will keep focus on the brand then Apple has a good chance of continuing in a world leading position.
Us: Do you believe that Apple has to be aware of other threats?
MR: Depends on Apple’s future strategies. For now they have to have focus on what they say and what they do. On one hand they have to deliver the revolutionary products they claim to do, and they can not be produced by cheap chinese labour. Apple has been spared from much of the criticism other companies would have to deal with if they did business the same way as Apple.
Apple has been able to keep the shutters tight, but slowing information about underpaid workers,
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questionable lawsuits etc. have started to spread, which hurts the brand thus it hurts Apple.
However it proves that no matter how good a strategy you have and how good a product you produce it will always be a matter of dirty business.
Transcription of the iPad presentation 2010
Part one
- Hi, thank you. Thanks for coming today. Thank you. Thanks you . Thank you.
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- Good morning and thank you all for coming today.
- We wanna to kick off 2010, by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product today. But before we get to that, I just got a few updates.
- The first is an update about iPods, a few weeks ago we sold our 250 million iPod and iPods have changed the way we discover and purchase and enjoy music.
- And with 250 million I just didn’t want to let this moment pas without… just recognizing it and its pretty amazing. So, that’s our first update.
- Second update, is about retail stores. You know, we now have 284 retail stores. It’s amazing. And last quarter, the holiday quarter, we had over 50 million, visitors to our stores. 50 million people in one quarter.
- One of our newest stores is our 4th store in New York City. It’s on Broadway, a few blocks up from Lincoln Center and it’s really beautiful. This is a shot of it before it opened and it will never look this good again. And ah… Here it is on opening day, a shot across the street. It is so wonderful, to be putting these stores with their phenomenal buying experience right in the neighborhoods of our customers. It feels great. And… So this is our latest and greatest retail stores.
- Next update store of another kind – the App store. an incredible phenomenon, delivering applications to iPhone users and iPad touch users around the world. We have over 140 thousand applications now on the App store. And a few weeks ago we announced, a user downloaded the third billion application on the App store. This is in around eighteenth months since inception. 3 billion applications in the App store.
- And lastly, we started Apple, we started Apple in 1976. 34 years later, we just ended our holiday quarter, our first fiscal quarter of 2010 with 15.6 billion dollars of revenue. I don’t even believe that. Now.. What that mean is that Apple is an over 50 billion dollar company. I like to forget that, because that’s not how we think about Apple. But it is pretty amazing. Now, where does Apple get this revenue? Gets it from three product models: iPods, iPhones and of course Macs. Now what’s really interesting about this, is that iPods are mobile devices, iPhones are all mobile devices and most of the Macs that
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we ship now are laptops, they are mobile devices too. Apple is a mobile devices company.
That’s what we do. And we ask our selves, with 15.6 billion dollars of revenues last quarter, how has Apple stack up against all the other companies that sell mobile devices.
And it turns out that by revenue Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world now. It’s amazing. Apple is larger than SONY mobile devices business, selling great camcorders and digital cameras and stuff that they make. It’s bigger than SAMSUNG’s mobile devices business, with all their handsets that they sell. And by revenue it’s even bigger than NOKIA’s mobile devices business, with all the handsets that they sell. Apple is the number one mobile devices company in the world. So those are the updates that we have today. So, now let’s get to the main event .
- I chuckled when I saw this. But before we get to that I want to go back to 1991, when
Apple… Apple announced and shipped its first Powerbooks. This was the first modern laptop computer. Apple actually invented the modern laptop computer with these power books. It was the first laptop that had TFT screen, the first modern LCD screens. It was the first laptop that pushed the keyboard up creating palm rests, and had an integrated pointing device in this case a trackball. Well of course 20 years later, we have got incredible laptops now. Just in few years ago in 2007 Apple reinvented the phone with the iPhone and a few years later we have got the great iPhone 3GS – the best phone in the world. And so, all of us use laptops and smartphones now.
- Everybody uses a laptop and or a smartphone. And the question has risen lately is there a room for third category of device in the middle. Something that is between the laptop and a smartphone. And of course we have ponder this question for years as well. The bar is pretty high, in order to really create a new category of devices, those devices have to be far better at doing some key tasks. They have to be far better at doing some really important things, better than the laptop, better than the smartphone. What kind of tasks?
Well, things like browsing the web. That’s a pretty tall order, something is better in browsing the web than a laptop. Ok, doing Email, enjoying and sharing photographs, video, watching videos, enjoying your music collection, playing games, reading eBooks.
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If there’s going to be a third category device, it have to be better in these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone, otherwise it has no reason for being. Now some people have thought, that that’s a Netbook. The problem is Netbooks aren’t better at anything, they are slow, they have low quality displays and they run clunky old PC software. So, they are not better than a laptop at anything, they are just cheaper. They are just cheap laptops. And we don’t think that they are a third category device.
- But We think we have got something that is. And we would like to show it to you today, for the first time. And we call it the iPad. So let me show it to you now, this is how it looks like, I happened to have one, right here. That’s what it looks like – very thin, just like this. So, let give you a little overview. It’s very thin. And you can change the background screen, the home screen, personalize it any way you want, people put their own photos on it I’m sure, but we ship a few and you can make it anything you want.
Part two
- And what this device does is extraordinary, you can browse the web with it, it is the best browsing experience you have ever had. It’s phenomenal to see a whole webpage right in front of you and you can manipulate it with your fingers, it’s unbelievably great, way better than a laptop, way better than a smartphone. And you can turn iPad anyway you want: up, down, sideways it automatically adjusts however you want to use it. And again to see the whole webpage is phenomenal, right there holding the internet in your hands, it’s an incredible experience.
- Phenomenal for mail. Want to focus in on a message, you can do that, see your inbox, again just turn iPad sideways get a different view on your mail, push the compose window a keyboard pops up, and it’s almost a life size. It’s a dream to type on.
- For photos, your albums are shown in a stack of photos, your albums are evince, you can unfold them, look at all your photos, flick through them, got some great slideshows build in. It’s a wonderful way to share your photos with friends and family.
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- Build in a calendar, you can see your moths activities or your days activities and everything in between. Build in a great address book, for your contacts. Have a great maps application which works with Google back in, show you maps, satellite views, zoom in on things.
- iPad is an awesome way to enjoy your music collection. And of course we have the iTunes store, build right in the iPad. You can discover music, you can purchase it, movies,
TV shows, podcasts, iTunes university, everything build right into the iPad.
- Youtube, you watch youtube on it, including youtube in high def now, they have got a lot of high def video. And of course it’s awesome to watch TV shows and movies on. So that gives you a little overview of what the iPad can do. But it’s nothing like seeing it, so I would love to show it to you now. Let’s take a look at it.
- Again, using this thing is remarkable, it’s… it’s so much more intimate than a laptop and it’s so much more capable than a smartphone with this gorgeous large display. So, this is the lock screen, I unlock it, the icons fly in, let’s go right to the web. So here we are at apple.com and I’m just going to go to the Safari I just touch the bookmarks icon and touch the New York Times lets say. And here we are right in to the New York Times, you can see how fast it is. And I can just scroll around here and look at the whole front page of the
New York Time’s. Anywhere I want to go, anything I want to make bigger I can make bigger. If I want to go into a story, I can just touch it. And I’m going to that story. Back to front page. And so I can browse around the New York Times, so easily. It’s really great.
I’ll go down here. Yeh... see whats happening today. And again just so easy to go into a story like this. See the photographs, read the story, it’s that simple. Let me go to another website here. I’ll go to Time magazine, see what’s up in Times website. Just flick through the website, see what’s happening.
- Go to another one here – Fandango. Wanna buy some tickets to a movie? Grab the tablet, it’s in the kitchen. Go to Fandango on your iPad and buy your tickets. It’s that simple, the whole website in the palm of your hands. Go to another one, it’s kind of nice National
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Geographic. And again, we can look at this in landscape mode if we like, go back to portrait. It’s very very simple and adapts to the way I wanna use it. And again I can zip around the website just touching on pictures of animals, what I wanna see. It’s just gorgeous, right in the palm of your hands. So, that is browsing the web. Let’s go to
Email. So, here I got a message, as you can see I can have photographs in the message.
And I can have my inbox right here. I can turn it sideways like this and I can also browse messages just by having my inbox here on the left. Take a look and see what kind of messages I have got. Here is another one, this is the Paris metro. We are going to focus on this message here, you know make this as big as we want, check out the metro in
Paris. Napa Valley, here is a PDF, you can just tap on the PDF. Displace it, it shows me all the wineries and I can plan out my trip to Napa Valley. So that’s how simple mail is.
Now if I want to reply to a message, or go ahead and send a message, I just hit the compose button right here. And up pops this gorgeous keyboard, and lets say Scott F and
Phil Schiller and there we go. It’s that simple to do email on the iPad.
- Ok, next let’s go into photos. This is what photos looks like. I can just look at everything, list of photos again in portrayal landscape and just fly through. I can look at any photo like this, by tapping on it. And again turn it. In portraits of landscape, and just flick through my photos. It’s that simple. I also can look at my photos’ albums and it grabs the media data from any PC or Mac. And if I am on a Mac I can also get events, faces and places from iPhoto. And once I have these I can look inside of any album as an example, and say, you know is this the one I am looking for, I can just pinch it open, no that’s not it, is this the one, no that’s not it, this must be the one, yeah that’s it. And again just flick through these photos and I have a little bar at the bottom if I want to script through them. Or I can just flick left or right through the photos, it’s really wonderful. I have again events, faces, now let’s see all the photos with Lis in them here. And places.
Shows me a map of all the places I have taken photographs, so I can just hold down one of the pins, push on one of the pins and see all the photos I took there, and see all the photos I took in New York. Let’s go to Paris, here’s all the photos I took in Paris, just tap
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on it to open them. And in addition to just looking at them as we have, we can build in slide shows, and so I can bring up a slide show here, select my music and pick one of the different transitions, I’m gonna pick one called origami and just push start slide show.
Part three
- You get the idea, isn’t that cool? So that’s photos. Let’s take a look at our music collection, built in iPod. And here is all my albums, and I can just scroll through my albums. Find something I like. When I see something I like I just tap on it and say yeah let’s play the song. CD album outwork. Just how it works. Bob Dylan again. So again, a great way, to enjoy your music on your iPad, your whole music collection.
- Amm.. Let me show you a few other things, the iTunes store. Again built right in. I can sample music, discover songs, buy them. And of course in addition to music I got movies, TV shows, podcasts audio books and iTunes you. All right here, all built right in to the iPad.
- Got a great calendar. Here, look at the month view. I can just drag my finger over events, get a little more detail on them. I can look at things as a week view or a day view, or a list view. You know. Very nice calendar.
- And great contacts application. Great address book. Just go through it like this if you want. Scott, it’s an example. So great contacts and calendars.
- Now, we also got a great maps app and I am showing you. Again, here is the Eiffel tower, we just tap the corner. Let’s go to satellite view. And again, we can just pinch this, as big as we like. Here we go, there is the Eiffel tower. So great maps App. So, let’s go to our current location here. So let’s.. Here is our current location in San Francisco and I’m gonna type in sushi, and we should find all the sushi places nearby. And again I can just tap on a pin to find one. Here we go, Here is ’’Sushi boat’’. So I wanna go find that one after this presentation, maybe get some launch. And here I can just hit on Google street view right here. And there is”Sushi boat” right there. So, I will probably have a pretty easy time finding Sushi Boat. As I, go get some sushi. All right, so that’s maps.
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- Now let me show you video, video is wonderful. Let’s go to YouTube. And I’m gonna pick a clip called wet and woofy that I know is in high DEF on YouTube. Here it is. And again I can even go full screen here, go in to landscape. Look at that, it’s just from
YouTube, isn’t it incredible? All right, so that’s a YouTube. And again here is related clips and more from that person. And again weather it’s in portrayal landscape, it’s just how it works. And of course videos, let’s go into landscape for this. And we have got movies, TV shows music videos, and that’s right go into a TV show, Modern family as an example and just watch it. Let’s do that with a movie. Let’s pick Star Trek. And let’s go to chapters, oh what’s a good one? Here we go. And again I can scrap though if I want to. Isn’t that nice? Let’s go back, take another movie that I love, which is UP. Awesome movie. And one of my favorite sequences ever in any movie, is this sequence in up right here. And you can tap full screen if you like. Isn’t that wonderful? So that is video on the iPad.
- And that gives you a little bit of an overview as to what the iPad can do. Isn’t that awesome? So, I have to say though watching it is nothing, like getting one in your hands.
Feeling all that right in your hands, right underneath your finger tips.
- So, let’s go back to the hardware a little bit. The iPad is really thin. It’s a half of inch thin. And it weights 1,5 pounds. That is thinner and lighter than any netbook. And it got a gorgeous 9,7 inch IPS display. Super high quality display using IPS technology, so you get great angle of view as well. Very high quality display. And as you know Apple builds the best capacitive multi – touch centers in the world. Married to our great display it is terrific. Super responsive, super precise. iPad is powered by our own custom silicon. We got an incredible group that do customs ciligon at Apple we have a chip called A4, which is the most advanced chip we have ever done that powers the iPad. It’s got the processor, the graphics, the IO, the memory controller, everything in this one chip and it screens.
And you can have 16, 32, 64 GB of flash storage inside the iPad. It’s got the latest in wireless networking: Wifi 802.11n and the latest Bluetooth 2.1. And the usual suspects accelerometer, compass, speaker, microphone, it’s got a 30 pin connector so it plugs in to
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the whole equal system of iPod accessories. And it’s got battery. What is the battery like for this remarkable device, we have been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life, in this one and a half pound device. 10 hours of battery life, So it means I can take a flight from
San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole way on one charge it’s pretty nice.
And in addition to 10 hours of battery life, it has over a month of standby life. So we can just set the iPad down, it will go to sleep automatically and come back in a month and it will still have charge. It’s remarkable.
- Environmentally the iPad is a great citizen. Arsenic – free, BFR – free, Mercury – free,
PVC- free and its aluminum and glass enclosure is highly recyclable. So that’s a little bit of an overview of the iPad’s hardware.
- Now, let’s go back to software, we have seen some great built in applications. Some all new built in applications. But now, let’s talk about the third part in application, let’s talk about the App store, and help me do that, let’s invite Scott Forstall our senior vice president of iPhone software.
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