I'm glad we have a word now for Charlie Chaplin misfire: Cringe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LR1Xvvch18

theologic 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I completely understand that if you were there in the culture how this can hopeless outdated. So, I completely understand how this would be a massive flop today. However, at the time, it was extremely well regarded as effective and universally praised. It was just "grind it out" marketing, and maybe you would need to understand Ries and Trout to get it. But is was good by any measurement that was being run. However, it feels like a polyester jumpsuit.

I would argue things like the 1984 ad from Apple were bizarre, and while it makes the mark, it wasn't pivotable in terms of actually being effective. It appealed to Apples core, but wasn't effective in terms of ad dollars.

What was mind blowing is when Jobs came back to Apple, and Chiat/Day launched "Think Different." This was not grind it out. It was not "weird Apple" stuff.

It was awe-inspiring branding that changed the nature of technology marketing. It was beautify and emotive. I think it holds up well today, and may well hold together for many generations to come.

The subsequent "Get a Mac / PC vs Mac" ads were beyond brilliant in being able to pivot away from just emotion to an informed sense of humor.

I like the iPod ads, but we started to lose the edge.

I see none of the raw brilliance today that was a part of the previous years. However, I think they still do a great job of grind it out marketing, and they have continued to understand their brand. Maybe this is okay for where they are at.

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cmrdporcupine 2 days ago | parent [-]

In the end neither Think Different or PC vs Mac had much of an effect on getting them any decent market share really. Those were the years when they were barely holding on.

Yes the iMac had big success, but mainly because it was an attractive piece of furniture.

iPad and then especially iPhone is what changed the formula completely. And with it they switched from focusing on a kind of "Think Different" model where they emphasized their oddity and uniqueness to being a luxury lifestyle brand instead.

They even dropped their historical "user friendly" mottos ("It Just Works" and "Computer for the rest of us") because those definitely didn't sound like slogans that high end luxury (or luxury wannabe) consumers would be attracted to.

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theologic a day ago | parent [-]

I don't think you probably have the history to frame this correctly.

Apple was dying. Somehow Steve got his foot in the door at the beginning of '97, and kicked out Gil in around 7 months. It was insane. Steve then immediately launched the Think Different, and personally narrated the ads. He then kills around 70% of the SKUs, killed the Newton, and got out the iMac in '98.

The reason why it was brilliant is because Steve said that we "lost our core." If there was a criticism about the think different campaign is that Steve was retreating to "the core groupees" therefore indicating that Apple was about the niche and not the mainstream. To Steve this was idiotic observation. You build from the devoted first. The campaign was brilliant as it wasn't about market growth, it was about stemming the blood loss and reclaiming the core. Then the MSFT deal was booed when announced. But it was classic Steve at his best.

To call the iMac "a piece of furniture" and the reason for its success is not to understanding how to deliver products and how to drive sales. Steve had an incredible aesthetic sense, and understood that he needs to segment his market an move away from the beige box. If you were in the market, you admired and were shocked at what he did.

But do you understand why suddenly there was an "i" in front? This wasn't about a piece of furniture, it was about portraying a device as your access to the outside world.

Then somehow you believe that the iPad and iPhone changed the formula, but I don't think you understand the iMac was the original example of how to apply the formula of being a product company that delivers a brand promise.

While Steve started as a PC person with Woz, he came back as a product person that had lived the glorious life of NeXT and Pixar. I think his banishment was helpful not hurtful. He understood that iMac was a product and not a PC.

He started asking "what products and what markets will Apple play in." The change was not iPhone or iPad. If you want to ask "when did the formula get copied outside of iMac?"

It was the iPod. It was iTunes. It was owning your own music. However, it was seen as a natural product extension from the iMac. Local storage of music was key.

Once they had a culture of products, then were able to build toward iPhone (iPad is a simple extension and has a much smaller impact on revenue.) However, it wasn't a pivot. It was a build.

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cmrdporcupine a day ago | parent [-]

> I don't think you probably have the history to frame this correctly.

I was born in '74, lived through the whole period, and my wife worked in marketing at Apple 2002-2010

	▲	theologic a day ago \| parent [-]
		While I don't want to dismiss your living through something, nor your wife's work history, by 2002, a lot of this had transitioned. I have a weird career where I was inside the door of Apple supplying tech in the early 90s, then worked in the PC industry, then returned to spend time inside of Apple as a supplier. I never had personal interactions with Steve, but the people I would interact with would say things like "Steve made the decision." In this time, I had responsibility for both marketing communications and engineering. (I know weird.) In my Marcom role, we looked at market data on advertising, and worked with figures like Larry Light--who is well known specifically for branding, and we asked him to help us in branding for the PC industry. I am not going to say that all my observations are right, but I will tell you that this is a field that I specifically worked in, and I have time inside the walls of One Infinite Loop.

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glhaynes 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not sure it was a misfire — I remember those ads as being pretty popular and having big mindshare. But that was certainly just my small perspective of the times.

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chuckadams 2 days ago | parent [-]

I remember eyebrows being raised even at the time over the Chaplin ads, but I suppose they're memorable enough even today that they couldn't have been all that off the mark. Certainly wasn't the worst of the missteps around the PCjr (and I'd forgotten they ran the same flavor of ads for the PC AT, which was a fine machine!)

	▲	theologic 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Externally, it was universally praised. I was selling PC gray market at the time, and it was highly effective. The only people that I knew that had a problem with it was certain IBMers that felt it didn't rep the Blue Channel (corporate sales) and our corporate PCs. However, as the IBM sales took off, I met anybody inside of IBM when I eventually got there that said, "Well that stupid campaign we had...."