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... Writer Naomi Klein is a leading critic of branding, especially Apple's. Klein, author of No Logo, argues that companies like Apple are no longer selling products. They are selling brands, which evoke a subtle mix of people's hopes, dreams and aspirations.
Klein notes how Benetton used images of racial harmony to sell clothes, while Apple used great leaders -- Cesar Chavez, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama -- to persuade people that a Macintosh might also allow them to "Think Different."
"People are drawn to these brands because they are selling their own ideas back to them, they are selling the most powerful ideas that we have in our culture such as transcendence and community -- even democracy itself, these are all brand meanings now," she told the Guardian newspaper.
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The "1984" ad began a branding campaign that portrayed Apple as a symbol of counterculture -- rebellious, free-thinking and creative. According to Charles Pillar, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, this image is a calculated marketing ploy to sell expensive computers.
"Expressions of almost spiritual faithfulness to the Mac, although heartfelt, weren't a purely spontaneous response to a sublime creation," he wrote. "They were a response to a calculated marketing ploy to sell computers that cost much more than competing brands.
"I'm not making this up. Members of the Mac's original engineering and marketing team told me all about it. They did it by building a sense of belonging to an elite club by portraying the Mac as embodying the values of righteous outsiderism and rebellion against injustice. It started in the early '80s with the famous '1984' TV commercial that launched the Mac, and continued with 'The computer for the rest of us' slogan and several ad campaigns playing on a revolutionary theme."
Steve Manning, co-founder of Igor, a brand consultancy in San Francisco, California, said even a seasoned professional like himself is seduced. "Even though I understand this stuff, I’ve bought into it," he said. "I own four Macs. They’re more expensive, but the advertising and marketing works."
[Apple: It's All About the Brand, Leander Kahney, 12.04.02, WIRED]
People like stuff that works the way it's supposed to. Their loyalty is based on experience. Duh! Describing brand loyalty as "almost spiritual faithfulness", or a computer as a "sublime creation" is about as pompous and silly as it gets.
"I own four Macs. They’re more expensive, but the advertising and marketing works."
So do the computers. If they didn't he wouldn't own any. He's just hyping the power of marketing because he sells marketing.
ah, shades of Vance Packard's "Hidden Persuaders"..
There really is little new under the sun, only different ways of describing and naming it.
What they're referring to here is image advertising. As opposed to product advertising. Image advertising's beginning is usually traced to a famous beer taste test in which a very large number of subjects couldn't tell the difference between major brands.
If taste had little to do with it, then what to we tout? Image, identification, group membership. "Be young, be goodlooking, be popular, be sexy, buy..."
Though image and image advertising has become a piece of all branding, it is most effective in similar markets where there is little difference in key product attributes. There are some famous examples where image was key, but these are rare and fit the requirement that no major underlying product difference exists. I'm far from identifying with Cesar Chavez, yet I've used Macs for thirty years as my main work machines. I'd switch to MS in a heartbeat if I could be more productive.
So you have a point, albeit one exaggerated by marketing hype about marketing hype.
And like all magic bullets, image advertising really doesn't work all by itself. And it doesn't work on all target audiences. If Apple did not do the work to make their product truly different and the design were clunky, it wouldn't have worked for them. Think about it. "Think Different" also fits it's branding in more ways than rebellion. And the product delivers on the deeper promise.
There's no dearth of folks willing to believe that product buyers are robots subliminally manipulated by puppet master advertising experts. And no lack of marketing "gurus" ready to sell an old idea as the latest magic way to sell anything to everybody. It fits many people's low view of humanity and it sells a lot of books.
thanks for your reply..