Advertisement Campaign of Apple Computers - Essay Example

Analysis of ‘Think Differently’ advertisement campaign of Apple Computers Introduction In the highly competitive business dynamics, marketing and branding of products becomes a crucial ingredient of business strategy. It is designed to showcase the attractions for the product and influence the purchase psychology of the customers. Consequently, advertising becomes the most important tool of an effective marketing strategy that highlights the differentiating elements of the products through continuous campaigns on different media platforms. The success of an advertising campaign is desirable as it not only facilitates creation and maintenance of market position but it also gives the company a considerable leverage in the market. The paper would be evaluating the ‘Think Different’ advertisement campaign of Apple computer that had given the company a new lease of life after it had lost its market leadership against the challenges of new firms like IBM in 1997. Rationale When Steve Job had returned to Apple computers after an exile of nearly twelve years, the company was in serious crisis and its market share had plummeted to nearly 3% by 1997 (Yoffie & Slind, 2007). Steve was faced with huge challenges of reviving Apple and putting it back to its former number one position. He was determined to succeed and rejuvenate it by redefining its vision and informing public as to why owning Apple products is still the best thing. Indeed, his passionate conviction needed a platform for creating awareness amongst the people and the ‘think different’ became one the leading success stories that had helped Apple to recover fast. It was the best turnaround market strategy that had signalled and started a significant shift towards concept conversation that was able to engage consumers and retain their attention for long. The Campaign ‘Think Different’ was iconic campaign for many reasons, not the least being that its strategic conceptualization emphatically linked its values and vision to that the greatest think tanks and innovators of the twentieth century who had come from all walks of life crossing geographical borders of race, colour and culture (Siltanen, 2011). This had defined and underpinned the ideas of the advertisement campaign. It was carried on different media platform: television and print including billboard and consisted of black and white images. The television campaign carried footage of leading people of past and present and ending with a young girl closing her eyes and looking at future scope. The background textual content was narrated by famous Hollywood actor, Richard Dreyfuss who talked about crazy people who were different. The print campaign was run as a sequel and featured dozens of different personalities including Einstein, Gandhi, Coppola, Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, Amelia Earhart etc. The posters and the television campaign were distinct in their presentation and the message that people who are crazy, think differently and change the world. Analysis Goldman and Papson (1996) strongly believe that key objective of advertisements is to bring about social reconstruction through creative ideas and help create a distinct image that is correlated to the product and company. The advertisements therefore tend to influence their psychology of social identity and subtly promise fulfilment of their dreams and expectations. The impact of their visual and textual content is linked to human behaviour that thrives on relationship building. They convey messages in highly innovative manner and reinforce the underpinned principles associated with the products. Apple’s ‘think different’ campaign was a brand statement that declared its values through simple words and visual content, linking its authenticity with people which people like and admire. The campaign was unique in its delivery of message because the tagline of two simple words was not only able to capture the spirit of the founding members but it was also able to give glimpses of its future that signified innovation at its best. It exuded universal appeal and promoted global value system by showcasing great people coming from different background. It showed consumers why it is different and the reasons for people to use it. Campaign subtly promised to fulfil their secret desire to be identified and linked to the great people. It became a roaring success, achieving its objective of bringing the company to the forefront of competitive business in the fast changing environment of rapid globalization and fast advancing technology. The impact of visual and textual content is linked to human behaviour and promotes relationship building. It includes people from diverse background and reflects the global value of the company and its intention to target the system rather than a specific community or group. The advertisement is prolific in its messages that target human psychology. At the same time, it is also able to raise its brand equity by providing value on its various products. By showing people from diverse segments, it had ensured satisfaction. Wernick (1991) believes that advertisements symbolize the cultural commodification of goods to compete in the market. The advertisements represent commodities or products that have some perceived value for the consumers and deliberately target that segment to sway their purchase behaviour. The apple campaign emphatically declared that it can change the world and it did change the fortune and market position of Apple in a dramatic turnaround. The success of the campaign did not lie only in the value of the product but in identifying a common need for change and to do something different. It was able to address the same across people coming from different race, culture and nationality. The campaign had provided the company with a global identity, reinforcing the reality of global values where equality and diversity is intrinsic part of social structure. The human behaviour and a distinct ‘crazy attitude’ was the key feature that relied heavily on influencing the socio-psychological needs of the customers. It effectively eliminated class differentiation and focused on the customer satisfaction. . Advertisements tend to focus on people and their behaviour mainly because marketing fundamentally caters to the changing demands of the customers (Baker and Hart, 2007). As such, they are designed to impact the self-concept of the people and subtly highlight traits that they can identify with. This is an interesting issue which was used as major plank within the ‘think different’ campaign of the Apple Company. The advertisement had actually no product placement except the company logo but had cleverly connected Apple with some of the most creative people who had made a mark in the history of mankind for varying reasons. It left people wanting to be part of Apple because then they could identify with one of these ‘crazy’ people! The impact of visuals and textual content are vital ingredients that persuade the viewer to become consumer or buyer. The concept of self-branding emerges as major motivation to reconstruct the image of self as per the cultural meaning and images taken from visual and textual content that indicate changing social codes of mainstream society (Hearn, 2008). Thus, advertisements have their own unique goals that are need driven and anticipate the needs of the people in order to determine to what extent the motivated goals can influence their preferences for change. The Apple campaign had also successfully targeted the motivated goals of its customers. It had subtly connected Apple computers with people who think differently, convincingly informing audience that associating with Apple products would bring them to the league of great people of the century! The genius of the ‘think different’ campaign had started a unique campaign of self-reflection and a promise to fill their ‘need’ to become different. Within the broader scope of advertising concepts, consumer behaviour has emerged as an essential part that exploits human traits by targeting consumers’ needs and desires. Semiotic within advertisements underline consumer behaviour mainly because consumers use products that they identify with and which helps express their social identity (Solomon et al, 2013). He clarifies that products represents something and has perceived value which could provide customer with certain derived meaning to support its social status. Thus, effective communication of perceived and desired meaning ensures that advertisement is able to influence the choice of the consumers. The ‘think different’ campaign had juxtaposed the visual content with the textual details and background narration with the sole intention of influencing the psychology of the viewer. By emphasizing the importance of values and ideology of thinking differently, it had not only linked Apple products with something that can make a difference but it had also raised the level of motivated goals of the customer to a new height of human relationships that defied social conventions. One of the most important features of a successful advertisement campaign is to ensure that the visual content has the ability to touch people’s emotions and stays in their memory for a long time. Thus, it is very important that the sales pitch of the advertisement campaign is able to penetrate or assimilate the essence of people’s hidden desires and is not afraid to foray into unknown territory to make connections with them (Parente, 2004). As a communication technique, advertisement excels in delivering messages in a highly innovative manner that not only adds credibility to the product but it significantly widens the reach of the customers. In the ‘think different’ campaign of Apple, the varying messages delivered to the people from different media platform had the common theme of value and power of thinking differently. Hackley, (2005) says that theories within market strategies and advertising are hugely important as they help to exploit the tenets of human behaviour. Kitchen (1994) asserts that advertising takes the consumers through different cognitive, affective and behavioural stages before they actually make the important decision of buying. Of the various models of advertising theories, AIDA or awareness; interest; desire; and action becomes important as it explains the psychology of buying. Mackay (2005) argues that effective advertisements significantly contribute to the success of the product because they expertly manoeuvre viewers through differently stages, resulting in purchase decision. These concepts were exploited within the ‘think different’ campaign of Apple computers and the advertisements had succeeded in attracting the attention of the consumers and prompted an interest in them which had developed a desire for their possession, resulting in the action of buying it. Lavidge & Steiners Hierarchy-of-effects model (1961) is similar to the AIDA model but often undergoes several more stages in order to end up buying. According to this theory, there are six stages: Awareness; knowledge; liking; preference; conviction; and purchase. While some consumer may jump some stages, the facts that the assumptions of various stage those consumers have to pass shows that purchase decisions are mostly well-deliberated processes. These theories can be applied on the advertising campaigns of Apple computers. When these advertisements had appeared in 1997, Apple had lost much of its market credibility and was struggling to survive. Under these circumstances, it can be fairly assumed that the major influencing factor must have been its ability to engage consumers in a constructive dialogue where their need to identify with the personalities of the advertisement becomes the key motivation for their interest in the Apple products. Conclusion The ‘think differently’ campaign had succeeding in capturing the attention of the people and turning them into buyers. This had happened because people identified or aspired to have the values that Apple subtly projected through depiction of great personalities of the world who had guts to think differently and bring remarkable changes to the lives of the people. It was a dream that the advertisement campaign promised to fulfil through its innovative products. At the same time, the different model theories have shown that advertisements, howsoever effective they might be in communicating and delivering the message, need to process certain criteria of communication that may actually take consumers to the store and motivate him/her to buy. But we cannot deny that the advertisement campaign had indeed served as successful turnaround strategy. The tagline ‘think differently’ was the key element that forced people to take action and they did as the flagging company made a resounding comeback to make reclaim its position of industry leader. (words: 1994) Reference Baker, M.J. and Hart S.J. (eds) (2007) The Marketing Book 6th edition, London: Butterworth-Heinemann. Goldman, R., & Papson, S. (2000) ‘Advertising in the age of accelerated marketing.’ In J. Schor & D. Holt (Eds.), The Consumer Society Reader (pp. 3-19). New York: The New Press. Hackley. C., (2005) Advertising and Promotion: communicating brands, London: SAGE. Hearn, Alison. (2008) Meat, Mask, Burden: Probing the contours of the branded self. Journal of Consumer Culture vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 197-217.. Kitchen. P (1994) The Marketing Communications revolution . A Leviathan Unveiled? Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol 7, no. 2, pp. 19-25. Unlimited Lavidge. R. J, Steiner. G. A., (1961) ‘A model of predictive measurement of advertising effectiveness,’ Journal of Marketing, vol. 52, pp. 59-62 Mackay. A., (2005) The practice of Advertising, 5th edition, Sydney: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann. Parente. D., (2004) Advertising campaign strategy: a guide to marketing communication plans, Ohio: Thomson. Siltanen, Rob. (2011) The Real Story Behind Apples Think Different Campaign, Available: http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/12/14/the-real-story-behind-apples-think-different-campaign/ [6 Dec. 2014]. Solomon R., M., Bamossy J., G., Askegaard T., S. & Hogg K., M., (2013) Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective, 5th edition, Harlow: Pearson education. Wernick, Andrew. (1991) Promotional culture: Advertising and Symbolic Expression in Late Capitalism, London: SAGE publication. Yoffie, David and Slind, Michael. (May, 2007 The Apple Computers, Boston: Harvard Business School publishing. Appendix Taken from Apple website Images of great personality from ‘Think Different’ advertisement campaign taken from web Read More