Apple's Branding Strategy

Apple Inc. uses the Apple brand to compete across several highly competitive markets, including the personal computer industry with its Macintosh line of computers and related software, the consumer electronics industry with products such as the iPod, digital music distribution through its iTunes Music Store, and more recently in the smart phone market with the Apple iPhone.

Apple's product strategy is to create innovative products and services aligned with a "digital hub" strategy, whereby Apple Macintosh computer products function as the digital hub for digital devices, including the Apple iPod, personal digital assistants, cellular phones, digital video and still cameras, and other electronic devices.

The Apple Brand Personality

Apple has a branding strategy that focuses on the emotions. The Apple brand personality is about lifestyle; imagination; liberty regained; innovation; passion; hopes, dreams and aspirations; and power-to-the-people through technology. The Apple brand personality is also about simplicity and the removal of complexity from people's lives; people-driven product design; and about being a really humanistic company with a heartfelt connection with its customers.

Apple Brand Equity and Apple's Customer Franchise

The Apple brand is not just intimate with its customers, it's loved, and there is a real sense of community among users of its main product lines.

The brand equity and customer franchise which Apple embodies is extremely strong. The preference for Apple products amongst the "Mac community", for instance, not only kept the company alive for much of the 90's (when from a rational economic perspective it looked like a dead duck) but it even enables the company to sustain pricing that is at a premium to its competitors.

It is arguable that without the price-premium which the Apple brand sustains in many product areas, the company would have exited the personal computer business several years ago. Small market share PC vendors with weaker brand equity have struggled to compete with the supply chain and manufacturing economics of Dell. Apple has made big advances in becoming more efficient, particularly in logistics and operations, but would still find it difficult to make a profit at the price levels Dell transacts at.

The Apple Customer Experience

The huge promise of the Apple brand, of course presents Apple with an enormous challenge to live up to. The innovative, beautifully-designed, highly ergonomic, and technology-leading products which Apple delivers are not only designed to match the brand promise, but are fundamental to keeping it.

Apple fully understands that all aspects of the customer experience are important and that all brand touch-points must reinforce the Apple brand.

Apple is expanding and improving its distribution capabilities by opening its own retail stores in key cities around the world in up-market, quality shopping venues. Apple provides Apple Mac-expert retail floor staff staff to selected resellers' stores (such as Australian department store David Jones); it has entered into strategic alliances with other companies to co-brand or distribute Apple's products and services (for example, HP who was selling a co-branded form of iPod and pre-loading iTunes onto consumer PCs and laptops). Apple has also increased the accessibility of iPods through various resellers that do not currently carry Apple Macintosh systems (such as Harvey Norman), and has increased the reach of its online stores.

The very successful Apple retail stores give prospective customers direct experience of Apple's brand values. Apple Store visitors experience a stimulating, no-pressure environment where they can discover more about the Apple family, try out the company's products, and get practical help on Apple products at the shops' Guru Bars. Apple retail staff are helpful, informative, and let their enthusiasm show without being brash or pushy.

The overall feeling is one of inclusiveness by a community that really understands what good technology should look and feel like - and how it should fit into people's lives.

Apple Brand Architecture

From a brand architecture viewpoint, the company maintains a "monolithic" brand identity - everything being associated with the Apple name, even when investing strongly in the Apple iPod and Apple iTunes products.

Apple's current line-up of product families includes not just the iPod and iTunes, but iMac, iBook, iLife, iWork, and now iPhone. However, even though marketing investments around iPod are substantial, Apple has not established an "i" brand. While the "i" prefix is used only for consumer products, it is not used for a large number of Apple's consumer products (eg Mac mini, MacBook, Apple TV, Airport Extreme, Safari, QuickTime, and Mighty Mouse).

The list of Apple's Trademarks reflects something of a jumbled past. The predominant sub-brand since the introduction of the Apple Macintosh in January 1984 has always been the Apple Mac. Products whose market includes Microsoft computer users (for example MobileMe, QuickTime, Bonjour, and Safari) have been named so they are somewhat neutral, and therefore more acceptable to Windows users. Yet other product have been developed more for a professional market (eg Aperture, the Final Cut family, and Xserve).

The iPod Halo Effect

Though Apple's iPhone and iTunes music business is profitable in its own right, Apple's venture into these product areas was based on a strategy of using the music business to help boost the appeal of Apple's computing business.

Apple is using iPod, iTunes, and now iPhone to reinforce and re-invigorate the Apple brand personality. At the same time, these product initiatives are growing a highly relevant, appealing brand image in the minds of consumer segments that Apple has not previously reached.

In a so-called iPod halo effect, Apple hoped that the popularity of iPod and iTunes among these new groups of customers would cause these segments to be interested in Apple's computer products. This does seem to have happened. Since the take-off of the iPod there has been a dramatic rise in Apple's computer sales and market share.

A couple of years ago, Apple's aspirations for the iPod halo effect was was highlighted most strongly when it used the slogan "from the creators of iPod" in its promotion of iMac G5 computers. In this instance, the Apple brand came full-circle - having been built into a branding system that originates in the personal computer market, then leveraged into the consumer electronics market, and then back into the consumer personal computer market.

Apple Brand Strength Now Creating Financial Success

So far, Apples' branding strategy is bearing fruit. For example, Apple reports that half of all computer sales through its retail channel are to people new to Macintosh, the company's sales and margins have been growing strongly since 2006, and Apple has achieved several "best ever" quarterly financial results during the past couple of years.

Leveraging the success of the iPod, Apple launched the iPhone (released in July 07) to extend the brand even further. Apple's buzz marketing efforts in the first half of 2007 were truly superb, culminating in the release of one of the most highly anticipated products for many years - and launching apple into a completely new market: mobile handsets. By July 2008 the buzz about the 3G iPhone resulted in over 1 million units being sold in the first 3 days of its release in over 20 countries around the world.

Apple Re-entering the Corporate Market via the iPhone Halo

Though no-one at Apple would say so today, the next phase of Apple's strategy seems focused on the Corporate marketplace.

A long time ago, Apple had a fairly strong market share in large companies.

A long, long time ago (at the end of the 1970's) the first spreadsheet program (VisiCalc) was launched on the Apple II. The first PC (the IBM PC) to run a Microsoft operating system (PC DOS) did not appear until 1981. When Microsoft launched its Excel spreadsheet in 1984 it appeared first on the just-released Apple Mac, such was Apple's presence among accounting and finance departments.

Even though Apple effectively stopped competing for corporate business during the 1990s, the Apple Mac is still used in some corporate environments. Microsoft still has a vigorous applications development team totally dedicated to writing business software for the Apple Mac. New versions of Microsoft Office for Apple Mac still come out approximately 2 years before similar functionality is placed in the next version of Microsoft Office for the Windows operating system.

Over the next few years it seems likely that Apple will re-focus on the Corporate marketplace: Apple has announced that "Snow Leopard" (the next version of the Apple Mac operating system, due in 2009) will include features allowing Mac computers to fully support Microsoft Exchange. This will enable corporate IT departments to support business users who wish to use Apple Macs for their main email clients.

Also, Microsoft continues to bring out advanced versions of Microsoft Office for Apple Mac, and - very significantly - in mid-2008 Apple announced a software upgrade for the iPhone which allows iPhones to be fully supported by Microsoft Exchange email servers. Corporate IT departments can now include iPhones as email clients.

Apple's strategy seems clear: to use the popularity of the iPhone to break back into large corporations, and ultimately have Apple Macs on the desks of large businesses (or more probably - in the laptop bags of middle and senior managers in most large businesses. The Macbook Air is also clearly aimed at this type of market).

As we say; no one in Apple will currently admit to such ambitions, but this is clearly where Apple's branding strategy is headed.

Apple's Original Apple Macintosh Marketing Strategy

Stanford University has published contemporary records and original documents of the marketing strategy for the Apple Macintosh launch in 1984, including the original Apple marketing strategy and the Apple Macintosh product introduction plan written by Regis McKenna.

It is now 25 years since the launch of the Apple Macintosh (on January 24, 1984). Having proven itself and already gained considerable popularity with the Apple II, Apple chose to announce the Apple Mac in one of the most famous-ever commercials, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984.

The formal product release came a couple of days later on January 24th, 1984.

In addition to the innovative Apple Mac graphical user interface (based on concepts from Xerox PARC), the Mac's industrial design - shown below - was revolutionary for the time. Interestingly, it share's the same screen size (9 inch) as the latest popular PC format: NetBooks.

The first Mac (above) had just 128KB of RAM and a 400KB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, and a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel monochrome display.

The original Mac graphical user interface was revolutionary in its day. It introduced the use of the mouse and features such as icons, fonts, folders, and audio to mainstream computers.

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