Advertising Case Studies

A brief analysis of a few popular Apple advertising campaigns, including the famous 1984 commercial and the Mac vs. PC campaign. The effectiveness of brand loyalty is also touched upon.

Apple Ad Analysis
By Matt Meier

Matt Meier | Summer 2012

INTRODUCTION
What is Apple? Well, it is a tasty fruit that falls from trees and caused Isaac Newton to contemplate gravity, but thats not important right now. Apple is an advertising agency that convinces people to buy really expensive and fancy computers. Wait, that still isnt quite right. No, Apple is a hardware company that has always ran second to the powerhouse Microsoft, but that does not make it any less important. Apple, guided by the vision of its former leader Steve Jobs, has come to be the be-all, end-all corporation, building sleek, metallic, and downright sexy gadgets and machines and marketing them in what can be said as being clever, witty, and colorful. And marketing is where Apple truly succeeds beyond what any company has ever done in the history of advertising. Truly, the strong arm of Apple has been its ability to convince consumers that they really want, nay, NEED that new, expensive gadget that can streamline their life and make them hip and cool. Apple did not exactly start out as such in its early days; print ads back then for the company were ugly, clunky, and had way too much text to be sane. 1 Clearly, they did not have their vision just yet, but they certainly had the machine to sell. Once their 1984 ad debuted for the Apple Macintosh, Apple never looked back well, that is until they kicked away their leader, Jobs, and fell into a slump for 11 years before finding their feet again when they brought Jobs back.2 After their launch of the iPod and iTunes service, it was then, truly, that Apple became the powerhouse marketing machine that it is today, with successful launches for its Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

When Super Bowl XVIII rolled around, consumers were not expecting to be greeted by an advertisement that looked as though it belonged in a big-budget movie. As the
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The Evolution of Apple Ads Apples Greatest Ads: The First Thirty Five Years

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famous 1984 commercial played out, images from George Orwells dystopian novel 1984 prevailed - the large, ominous screen with Big Brother spouting; nameless souls shuffling mindlessly in a dark, grey world; a sense of hopelessness casting the strongest emotion. But through it all, a woman dressed sportily and wielding a sledgehammer, charges through the dead-like masses and swings the hammer into the giant screen, causing an explosion and a movie-trailer guy to start talking about this thing called a Macintosh. All in all, the commercial was epic, expensive, and eye-opening. What made the 1984 commercial so unique and memorable is that no one had the audacity to attempt something on that scale before. Visionary science fiction director Ridley Scott was brought on board by Chiat/Day - the agency responsible for creating the commercial - to produce and director the ad, which harkened to the famous Orwell novel

1984, no doubt a shot at the year of the ads broadcasting.3 The product to be featured in
the ad was the new Apple Macintosh, the first mass-produced graphical-user interface computer with a mouse. (It should be noted here that Apple never invented as much as it did innovate products on the market. The Macintosh was not the first GUI operating system made available that distinction belongs to Xeroxs The Star, released in 1981.)4 After the commercials inception on the storyboard, the Apple board of directors were not pleased with the direction the ad was going; the most grossly-stated point made concerning the ad was the lack of the actual product, with no Macintosh to be featured during the airing. Despite the boards lack of confidence in Scott and Chiat/Day, Steve Jobs quietly allowed the continued development of the ad, with Jobs providing cost for half of the commercials budget.5 Needless to say, the gamble of the ad paid off greatly for Apple and Macintosh quickly became a household name. Years later, in 2010, Apple would make another great gamble, one that ended up innovating an entire industry with its debut. On January 27, 2010, Steve Jobs took the stage
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Art and Copy Macintosh and the First GUI 5 Art and Copy

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to introduce a new gadget to a captive audience, calling the object in his hands the iPad. Besides the giggle-worthy nature of the name at first, everyone was curious and excited about this new device, though some individuals labeled the device an oversized version of the iPod Touch.6 The iPad was Apples second stab at the tablet-category of personal computing and they intended to change the market entirely in one fell swoop. (Apples original tablet, The Newton, was released in 1993 and was an utter failure for the company, perhaps since Jobs had not yet returned to the company).7 Apple sought to further drum up interest by creating a tantalizing commercial during the Oscars that year in 2010, which proposed to consumers What can you do with an iPad?8 The commercial not only addressed the viewers what the iPad was capable of doing, but pulled many people into the I need this bandwagon. Sure enough, when the iPad was finally released on April 3 of the same year, sales were through the roof. Literally overnight, the tablet PC market was reborn and the computer industry has been fighting ever since to match the iPad in quality and quantity. What can be said about the extremely successful 1984 commercial and the pre launch campaign for the iPad? Firstly, the ambiguity of the product when first announced helped to draw interest from consumers. When the 1984 ad aired, everyone was asking their friends and family What is a Macintosh? Truly, the only way to find out was to obtain one or know of someone who had one, which surely helped to draw word-of-mouth publicity for Apple without the Internet in 1984, googling up for answers was still 14 years ahead. When the iPad was first announced, there technically was never an announcement to begin with; industry analysts had been speculating for months prior to what exactly Apple was cooking up, with assumptions leading to a possible tablet computer. Sure enough, the world became aware of the iPad when it was formally announced by Jobs in early 2010.

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Introductory Scenario: Polishing the Apple (Again and Again) The NYTimes Review of the Original Apple Tablet: Less Than Fulfilling 8 Introductory Scenario: Polishing the Apple (Again and Again)

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Both the 1984 commercial and the early iPad rumors both utilized ambiguity as a means of drumming up interest, but that is where the similarities end. The most marked difference between the two ads was the timeframes at which they occurred. The Macintosh came out in a time when most Americans were not familiar with personal computers, let alone owned one for their own personal use. The nature of not even showing the Macintosh in the 1984 ad was extremely risky, given the lack of a large, PC-owning base, but Apple got lucky with their gamble and succeeded. The iPad, while certainly different, took aspects that many users were already familiar with at the time, namely iOS, the mobile operating system used on the iPhone and iPod Touch. With that hook of familiarity, users could easily use an iPad if they had prior experience with either the iPhone or iPod Touch. And while both ads did bring about the message of the product being different, the nature to which they displayed that message does contrast. The 1984 commercial was meant to be loud, sudden, and explosive literally. No doubt that was successful. Contrary to that perspective, the iPad commercial actually featured the product front and center, with its usefulness being the highlight of the 60-second ad.

GET A MAC
Beginning in May 2006, TBWA/Chiat/Day began a long-running and highly successful ad campaign advertisement for Apple, titled Get a Mac. The series of commercials featured two characters, the bumbling and incompetent PC and the fresh, young, and cool Mac. Both characters would make frequent jabs at each other, usually Mac touting his ability to work and (at times) complimenting PC while PC would come down harshly on Mac, usually with PC attempting to make a point and utterly fail.9 The character of PC was clearly a personification of Windows XP (and later 7), no doubt creating clear similarities with the character to former Microsoft leader Bill Gates. Mac himself was, quite obviously, the embodiment of a Mac and
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Apples Get a Mac, the Complete Campaign

Matt Meier | Summer 2012

everything Apple stood for. The ads largely played off as a form of comparison advertisement, which demonstrate a brands ability to satisfy consumers by comparing its features to those of competitive brands.10 The intentional driving strategy for this campaign was to paint a picture to consumers that PC (Windows XP) is highly susceptible and prone to failure, which was indeed a common issue with the operating system. The commercials did hit a chord with consumers when the campaign began in 2006; by the end of the fiscal year of September 2006, Apple sales had increased by 39%, with sales of Macs nearing 1.3 million units.11 The campaigns success can also be measured by the length it ran, from May 2006 to October 2009, an unprecedented amount of time for any campaign. The campaign has had a lasting effect with many consumers since the campaigns airing, with many referring to any non-Apple computer as a PC while Macs remain Macs to be politically correct, however, Macs are still PCs by definition, since they remain personal computers. So, it can be easily said that not only have sales for Macs, and Apple products in general, have increased because of the Get a Mac campaign, the success of the commercials has provided a cultural touch-mark that is sure to remain unchanged for some time to come.

BRAND LOYALTY
If there is one element that makes Apple extremely successful, it would be the level of brand loyalty that its fans have acquired in recent years, at times nearing almost cult-like levels the leading website for Apple product rumors and announcements is nonetheless titled Cult of Mac.

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Method C: Comparison Ads The Get a Mac Campaign and Apples Victory

Matt Meier | Summer 2012

Brand loyalty has a fairly straight-forward definition: consumers repeatedly purchase the same brand to the exclusion of competitors brands.12 Many individuals that have purchased Macs in years past have come to see Macs, and generally Apple products, as the only worthy product worth owning. Apples strong following can probably be attributed to its strong ethic to provide consumers with not only sleek and usable products, but also by providing a level of support unseen in most other industries. Often times, a person with a broken MacBook Pro can simply visit a local Apple store and swap for a new machine, without a bit of hassle to be had. This ease of product support has gained Apple a very loyal following of people who would be hard pressed to change. When the 1984 ad debuted during Super Bowl XVIII , Apple did not exactly have the die-hard following it enjoys today. Previous Apple products, notably the Apple II, were not widely popular or utilized in the business and home industries. As stated before, Apple made the gamble of featuring a product the Macintosh in an ad that did not actually feature the product itself. Of course, success was to be had for Apple anyway, and continuing success for the company can possibly be attributed to the creation of brand equity with the 1984 ad. Brand equity is the set of brand assets linked to a brand, its name and symbo l, which to apply to the 1984 ad was the familiar rainbow Apple logo.13 The famous rainbow logo began its use in 1977 and would continue to be utilized by the company until the late 1990s. That logo is inseparable from Apple and, even today, seeing that rainbow logo can still identify the specific company it represents. By the time the iPad advertising campaign kicked off in 2010, the world was generally aware of Apple and their knack for highly influential products, let alone the loyal fan-base that had formulated since the iPod revolution of the early 2000s. What Apple needed to succeed with in the iPad campaign was not merely to relaunch a stagnant computer category, but to convince everyone that this was something they needed. With the Oscar

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Building and Maintaining Brand Loyalty among Consumers Building and Maintaining Brand Loyalty among Consumers

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iPad ad displaying the uses of the machine, from writing email to reading books, most everyone seemed to be won over by the device. There were the few hold-outs, primarily the oversized version of the iPod Touch crowd, but those negative views quickly eroded away. 14

CONCLUSION
Apple has certainly come a long way its roots, beginning as a humble start-up computer company with big ambitions, hitting the stratosphere with a legendary ad before the company suddenly failing the year after, and then finding their feet again a decade later. It is no question that Apple has become a powerful name, even becoming the most coveted brand in the world, valued at over $153 billion.15 And the following that Apple has gained within the last decade can be attributed to its ability to market to the right people the world over. Despite these successes with the company, Apple still has its failures from time to time. Apple TV has struggled to find a footing since its debut back in 2007, and the new iPad (not officially named the iPad 3 as some had expected) received lukewarm reception from consumers and critics. The release of the iPhone 4 and the ensuing Attennagate attracted a lot of negative publicity, especially given the nature on how Apple handled the situation. By far the biggest criticism the company has received in the past year has been the treatment of its manufacturing employees in China, with many calling the conditions and working hours there brutal (Apple has since stepped up efforts to improve their image in China). I have largely held a negative view of Apple since the day I began using their Macintosh computers in college. Numerous experiences I have had with the machines have always been negative, with many of the components in the system not working the way as they are expected. I am also highly critical of Apples extreme walled garden concept,

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Introductory Scenario: Polishing the Apple (Again and Again) How Apple became the worlds most valuable brand

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wherein Apple controls every aspect of their product, from development all the way to release. And the products themselves that Apple releases, namely the MacBook and Pro lines, are too solid and singular, which does not allow for ease to customize the machine as wanted. Despite my highly negative viewpoint of Apple, I must give them kudos for their brilliant marketing through the years (exception to the Get a Mac campaign, which I have highly disagreed with their interpretation of Windows). Of remark, I must call attention to the ads for the iPod, featuring silhouette people dancing against color backgrounds, the iPod itself highlighted in stark white against the black silhouette; I truly loved these ads and the fun vibe they gave off. I am sure Apple will continue to be a powerhouse in advertising as the years wear on, despite the loss of their innovative leader Steve Jobs. With every new product that Apple releases, there is sure to be some clever marketing to be had.

Matt Meier | Summer 2012

WORKS CITED
Chapman, Cameron. The Evolution of Apple Ads. September 15, 2010. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/09/the-evolution-of-apple-ads/ (accessed May 10, 2012). Elmer-DeWitt, Philip. How Apple became the world's most valuable brand. May 9, 2011. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/09/how-apple-became-the-worlds-mostvaluable-brand/ (accessed May 10, 2012). Nosowitz, Dan. The NYTimes Review of the Original Apple Tablet: Less Than Fulfilling. January 25, 2010. http://gizmodo.com/5456818/the-nytimes-review-of-the-originalapple-tablet-less-than-fulfilling (accessed May 10, 2012). Nudd, Tim. Apple's 'Get a Mac,' the Complete Campaign. April 13, 2011. http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/apples-get-mac-complete-campaign130552?page=1 (accessed May 10, 2012). "Building and Maintaing Brand Loyalty among Consumers." In Advertising and Integrated

Brand Promotion, by Thomas C. O'Guinn, Chris T. Allen and Richard J. Semenik, 26.
USA: South-Western, Cengage Learning, 2012. "Introduction Scenario: Polishing the Apple (Again and Again)." In Advertising and Integrated

Brand Promotion, by Thomas C. O'Guinn, Chris T. Allen and Richard J. Semenik, 276277. USA: South-Western, Cengage Learning, 2012. "Method C: Comparison Ads." In Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion, by Thomas C. O'Guinn, Chris T. Allen and Richard J. Semenik, 342-343. USA: South-Western, Cengage Learning , 2012.

Art and Copy. Directed by Doug Pray. 2009.

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Shobz. The Get a Mac Campaign and Apples Victory. February 23, 2011. http://webscopia.com/2011/02/the-get-a-mac-campaign-and-apples-victory/ (accessed May 10, 2012). The Huffington Post. Apple's Greatest Ads: The First Thirty Five Years . December 11, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-apples-best-adcampaigns_n_998129.html#s393548&title=A_Is_For (accessed May 10, 2012). Utah State University. Macintosh and the First GUI. n.d. http://imrl.usu.edu/oslo/technology_writing/004_003.htm (accessed May 10, 2012).

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