
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”- Steve Jobs, Think Different (1997)
Steve Jobs not only represents a brand, but actually a generation of users who follow in the footsteps of his creativity. The impact that Jobs has had on everyone’s lives can never be overestimated. Although you’re not always aware of it, his innovations have affected everything around you, from movies, to computers, music and mobile phones.
A lot of people still keep asking: “Why is Apple such a successful brand?” In order to answer this question, we should remember some of Steve Jobs’ key quotes, when he was just a young visionary:
“Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.”
And boy, was he right about what we remember! Not only were his products iconic, but they’re also his legacy. The key to Jobs’ success is a combination of quality, innovation, and market strategies that were designed extremely carefully. They were so effective that Apple managed to reinvent products that were already available on the market, and got consumers to think they had never seen anything like them before.
Steve Jobs not only reinvented Apple, but he redesigned and marketed thousands of products that were actually already on the market (e.g. mp3 players). Steve was so brilliant, that even when he was fired from his post as CEO of Apple, it didn’t stop him from returning to his post the second time, and this time increasing their sales.
1) MAKE A GREAT PRODUCT.
Since 1981, we’ve observed success, strategy, inspiration, and innovation. Very few entrepreneurs have managed to accomplish what Steve Jobs did: create an excellent product. From its performance, to the physical space each one occupies, the design, and the beautiful box it comes carefully wrapped in- when you buy an Apple product you know what to expect. For Jobs: (and thousands on his team, of course! After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, or alone!) product quality comes first and not just a great packaging and excellent marketing strategies. The key is that the product is excellent. In his own words:
“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse’.”
2) DON’T SELL PRODUCTS, SELL DREAMS.
Apple’s strategy involves selling their consumers a global package of dreams, personal experiences, and status, and it makes almost all other products go unnoticed if they don’t carry the Apple logo.
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