Steve Jobs on Marketing

This explains everything...

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When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he found a company completely unlike the one we see today.

It had lost its purpose.

His focus on creating amazing products is legendary, as is his widely-acclaimed genius for marketing.

So, it's worth noting the first TV spot he produced upon returning to the company he co-founded. It's one of my favorites, and I've shared it on my site before.

But before the spot ever aired, Jobs wanted to explain it to the employees at Apple.

This is important.

Take your phone off the hook. Turn up the volume on your computer, and listen carefully.

This is as pure an explanation of where radio has gone wrong over the past two to three decades as any you will hear.

“To me, marketing is about values."

"This is a very noisy world and we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company will. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us."

"Even a great brand needs investments and caring if it's going to retain its relevance and vitality, and the Apple brand has clearly suffered from neglect in this area in the last few years, and we need to bring it back."

"The way to do that is not to talk about speeds and feeds. It's not to talk about mps and megahertz. It's not to talk about why we're better than Windows."

"Our customers want to know, 'Who is Apple, and what is it we stand for? Where do we fit in this world?'"

"What we're about isn't making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. But Apple's about something more than that. Apple, at the core, its core value, is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better."

What does your company stand for?

What does your station stand for?

What do you stand for?

If you don't know the answer, if you don't like the answer, why are you wasting your one life there?