The Apple of Everyone's Eye

After 13 years as the Best Global Brand, Coca Cola has lost a bit of its fizz.  In the last week, international branding and marketing company, Interbrand, who evaluates companies on their global brand appeal, has named Apple as the Best Global Brand.  Interbrand looks at a number of factors, including financial success and market influence in making their list.  Tech companies tended to dominate the list this year, with Google taking the second spot, IBM in fourth, Microsoft in fifth and Samsung in eigth.

In separate news, Emily Chasen of the Wall Street Journal reported that "U.S. nonfinancial companies held $1.48 trillion in cash as of June 30, according to Moody’s review of the more than 1,000 companies it rates. Cash stockpiles have grown by about 2% from $1.45 trillion at the end of last year, and up 81% from $820 billion at the end of 2006."  What makes this relevant to the story about Apple being the top brand is that 10% of those cash reserves, or about $147 billion, belongs to one company...Apple.

So Apple, well known and with lots of cash on hand, is like that kid you resented in high school...more popular and richer than anyone has a right to be.  

And just like that kid in high school, the future looks bright for Apple.  Their massive cash reserves will afford them the ability to develop or acquire the technology that they need to keep their stable of products popular and in demand.  Their ubiquitous name and logo will keep them in the minds of tech-hungry populous.  Their aura and mystique and money will provide them some ability to survive the occassional stumble or misstep without losing customer loyalty.

It is somewhat amazing that Apple is on the top brand list at all.  In the 90s, the company appeared to be gasping on fumes.  Swallowing its pride, the Board of Directors wooed Steve Jobs back to the company he started and the rest, as they say, is history.  The other remarkable thing is that Apple has hit this high water mark two years after Jobs' death.  Given past history, some pundits speculated whether Apple could grow, thrive or even survive without Jobs at the helm. 

I don't expect that Apple will repeat Coke's 13 year run as Best Global Brand.  For one, I suspect Coke's longevity as Best Global Brand had a lot to do with more than a century of strong branding and marketing throughout the world.  Apple hasn't been around that long, nor as consistently successful or global.  Second, Google is nipping at Apple's heels.  Coca Cola, at number three, is significantly behind the two tech giants in Brand Value as calculated by Interbrand.  More than any other company on the list, Google also has impressive cash reserves and reputation that will allow it to almost compete with Apple, if it chooses, in growth and branding games.

Regardless of what happens in future years, right now, its good to be Apple!

Smoke Signals

For three days last week it seems as if the world was obsessed with black and white smoke.  According to wiki.answers, 18% of the world is Catholic.  So why were any of the other 82% of us paying any attention to who would be the next Pope?

In the 1980s, a company called Pencept released what is commonly considered the first tablet computer.  No one noticed.  Despite many other attempts to develop and market the devices, the market ignored tablet computers until a few years ago when Apple released the iPad.

The connection, as I see it, is that both the Pope and Apple, demand our attention.  While their messages are ostensibly delivered to their respective faithful, they are in fact speaking to all of us.  They are speaking to all of us because what they do, what they say, impacts all of us.  They impact us because they influence the public conversation.

Pencept marketed a tablet computer and no one noticed.  Apple came out with one and all of the sudden everyone had to have one.  If the Pope and the Catholic Church even signal that they are considering a change in a church custom or rule, they send shock waves throughout the spiritual, cultural and political worlds.

I don't know that I would recommend that every company try to become an influencer like Apple.  That takes years, amazing amounts of effort, resources and luck, and a singular leader, like the Pope...or Steve Jobs.  But at the very least, you should pay attention to the smoke signals.

The Many P's of Marketing: Pennies

Marketing has gotten more and more nuanced, as new technologies and strategies have opened up many options for marketers.  It is my contention that today, the marketing mix contains much more than the traditional four or five P's that are taught in school.  In this series I am exploring the Many P's of Marketing.

Pennies: When I got an iPad a while back, I spent the first few weeks learning about the whole "iCulture" created by Apple.

I am talking particularly about apps.  To a Windows boy, born and bred, apps seem an awful lot like programs and software that you could purchase and upload to your computer.  Except that apps are REALLY easy to install and many of them are free or cost mere pennies to purchase.

The success of smart phones and tablets has created a whole new app-based economy.  For literally pennies you can have access to a seemingly endless array of tools, games and features, both utilitarian and frivolous, that can fill your devices memory, and the hours of your day, with "things to do."

The thing that I think is so amazing is the ubiquitous nature of it all.  Long before I had an iPad or smartphone, I knew about Angry Birds and CT5K (couch to 5K, for the uninitiated) training app.  I lusted for apps that I couldn't get with my non-smart phone and Apple-less and Android-less existence.  

The brilliant thing about this app-based world is the ease of entry.  Many apps allow you to try a basic form of the app for free.  You get hooked and then forking over the $2.99 for the upgrade is a no-brainer.  And even though they make just pennies per purchase, the sheer volume of these small purchases has helped some small time developers to make a decent income, at least according to this Newsweek article.  The continued success and eager adoption of each new version of the Apple Operating System (iOS) would seem to indicate that this trend is continuing.

There are two thoughts to ponder for those marketers who don't work for Apple.  The first and more generic thought is the age old axiom that you can deal with only making a few pennies profit per item as long as you can make it up in volume.  The Internet provides an effective and efficient way to reach a huge audience, if you can figure out how to capture peoples imagination.  And their pennies.

The second thought is that it seems more and more important to figure out a way to "app-ify" your marketing plan.  Because smart phones and tablets have become more popular, an increasingly large portion of the marketplace are using these devices as their go to venue to interact with the electronic media.  In 2011, it was estimated that 35 percent of all US adults had a smartphone (83% had a cellphone).  That forecast was up to 45% for 2012, which I think shows the incredible growth of this industry/product/media.

The music industry seems to have done just this.  It wasn't that long ago that if you wanted to purchase a particular song, you had to buy the whole album (really a CD but I am glad we still call them albums.)  Maybe, if you were lucky and the song was released as a single, you could get the song a bit cheaper on an EP.  Now, songs are available for purchase individually.  Your cost to get a particular song you are fond of has gone from $17.99 for the CD to $1.29 or less.  This has had some interesting consequences.  According to an article in Digital Trends, music sales overall rose from 2011 to 2012, but album sales are down.

How a company responds to the app-ification of the marketplace will depend on a lot of factors.  How their decision impacts the company, will depend on the marketplace.  Will we all be rejoicing about pennies from heaven or scratching for pennies?  I don't know for sure.  The crystal ball app I downloaded needs an upgrade to get me the answer.

The Many P's of Marketing: Perfection

Marketing has gotten more and more nuanced, as new technologies and strategies have opened up many options for marketers.  It is my contention that today, the marketing mix contains much more than the traditional four or five P's that are taught in school.  In this series I am exploring the Many P's of Marketing.

Perfection:  There are few things I enjoy more than a perfectly ripened peach.  It is firm yet juicy, sweet and tangy, an adventure to eat and simply delicious.  It is fruit nirvana!  The problem with peaches is that they are perfectly ripe for such a short period of time that is almost impossible to experience this state of perfection very often.

Despite this, farmers still grow, harvest and ship peaches.  Grocery stores still stock them and sell them.  And I still buy them, hoping for that rare occurrence of a perfect peach.

The point is the great peach infrastructure isn't letting the difficulty of delivering their best, get in the way of delivering good.  They do not throw in the towel because they know only rarely will a piece of fruit hit the table at the perfect time.  Instead, they work to get the peaches they sell as good as they can.  And then they sell them.  Voltaire stated this more simply in his poem La Bégueule or The Prude Woman:  "The best is the enemy of the good."

In marketing terms, this means that there is an opportunity cost to waiting for perfection.  An imperfect ad that is placed in the media always generates more sales than the "great idea" that is still on the drawing table.  A product that is in the market, being purchased, used and tested by consumers will outsell the product that never gets released because the designers or the engineers or the factory "just can't get it right."  You can read more about this in a blog I wrote last summer, titled "Don't Wait For Perfection" here.

We have all read countless articles and blogs about the late Steve Jobs' obsession with perfection.  I would argue that even Mr. Jobs realized that perfection is the enemy of the good.  Eventually, Apple released the iPhone, the Macbook, the iPad.  They put each item out on the market and learned how they could make it better and did.  If the iPhone had been perfect when it was first released, Best Buy would not be selling iPhone 4, 4S and 5 right now (with another version right around the corner!)

I am not saying that you shouldn't strive for perfection.  Every marketer should.  But like growing peaches, if you wait until you have perfection before you go to market, you are probably going to be too late!

The Many P's of Marketing: Perspective

Marketing has gotten more and more nuanced, as new technologies and strategies have opened up many options for marketers.  It is my contention that today, the marketing mix contains much more than the traditional four or five P's that are taught in school.  In this series I am exploring the Many P's of Marketing.

Perspective:  YOU know how many hours, days, weeks and years you spent designing and crafting the product.  YOU know how you sweat every detail so you could deliver the service just so.  YOU know how hard you have worked to design and deliver a solution to the problems or needs of your customers.

So why aren't THEY (your customers) standing in line to buy what you have to offer like its the latest iteration of the iPhone? 

Perhaps it is because from their perspective, you don't have the product, price, packaging or promotion right.  Perhaps it is because from their perspective, you addressed needs they don't have any more, or at least don't care about any more.  Perhaps you haven't looked at your product, and the rest of your marketing P's, from the perspective of your customer.  

Apple does and they stand in line for the iPhone.

The Many P's of Marketing: Passion

As I was starting work on this series of blogs about the many P's of marketing, I reached out to marketers and communicators whom I respected to talk about the ideas and to invite some of them to write guest blogs for the series.  One of the people I reached out to, Melea Smith, asked me if I was writing about the traditional 4 P's of Marketing: Product, Price, Promotion and Place or the New 4 P's of Marketing: Passion, Purpose, Personality and Positioning.  "Both," I glibly lied to her.  And then I started writing about the new four P's.

Passion:  You don't have to be passionate about your product, service or company to market it, but it helps.  Just like you don't have to love the game of basketball to be a good player, it is almost impossible to be a superstar without a certain level of passion.  Passion is the difference between a good speaker and an evangelist; it is what makes a follower into an acolyte, a fan into a groupie, an advertisement reader into a customer.

A marketer who doesn't feel passionate about what he is marketing, can still develop and execute an effective marketing plan.  But it is passion for the product or service that is being marketed that helps the marketer keep the faith during the inevitable slow times.  It is passion that inspires a "we MUST win" attitude among the marketing team.  It is passion that helps him sell the concepts in the marketing plan in the first place.

Why is passion important?  While passion has many meanings, I think, when it comes to marketing, passion is about truly believing that your product CAN help customers; that it WILL address their needs as well or better than any other option.  Passion about your product is, in other words, belief in the quality of your product and its attributes.

That belief, that conviction, when it is the basis for the marketing plan, shows through and turbocharges the marketing effort.  As D. H. Lawrence said, "Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot."  Lawrence may have been talking about a different type of passion, but the quote is no less relevant when applied to marketing!

As with so many of the P's of Marketing, passion has at least two meanings that make it relevant to marketing.  In addition to being valuable if the marketer feels passionate about the product or service he is marketing, it is important that the marketing plan is designed to arouse the passions of the prospect.

All purchase decisions are made emotionally.  All of them.  Some decisions are later reinforced or backed up with facts, but emotions drive the initial decision. People make purchase decisions based on what will make them feel or look better, what will result in the least problems or the most recognition.  I remember when my parents bought a new house when I was a teenager.  They told us about the color of the drapes and the trees in the back yard but they couldn't remember how many rooms were in the house.

It stands to reason, then, that a marketer who can incite the passions of a prospect, has a much better chance of turning that prospect into a customer.  There have been a lot of studies about the different steps a prospect goes through before becoming a customer.  While there is some variation in the number of steps or the tags they assign to these steps, all of the studies have some step where the prospect makes an emotional connection to the product or service being considered.  In every process, there is a point where passions are aroused before the purchase decision is made.

Very successful marketers don't stop with the purchase decision.  Recognizing that if customers continue to feel passionate about their decision, at the least they will be effective word-of-mouth advertisers.  At the best they will continue to be customers.  Apple is a master of this.  They do an excellent job of keeping their customers passionate about the products they purchase.  Just try telling someone who uses a Mac about a cool new feature on your PC and you will experience what a second-class citizen feels like!

"Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you."               T. Alan Armstrong