Evaluation of Apples Simple Is the Ultimate Sophistication Campaign - Coursework Example

Evaluation of Apple’s “Simple is the Ultimate Sophistication” Campaign

Introduction

An advertisement is defined as a paid form of non-personal communication about an organization or its products cum services or even ideas passed through a mass communication channel in the form of a video, audio picture or print on Television, radio, and websites (online). Successful brands often create their advertisements in a manner to complement the advertising campaign which too is defined as the planning, creation and implementation of the advertising activities (Linda, 2007). Similarly, according to Linda 2015, the advertising campaign is a collection of advertisements centralized around a single message with clearly defined timing (Lindsay, 2015).

Companies develop or create an advertisement campaign which reflects what they believe their products or services are. It is more like what they want their customers to believe about their company or the products. Advertisement campaign can stand alone as a marketer of the products, or it can be complemented by the advertisements which may also be created in a way that reflects the company's advertisement campaign (Dahlqvist and Linde, 2002). This is aimed at influencing what customers perceive of the product.

Industry Background

Computing and or IT industry is characterized by constant innovation and complexity. This range of computer and its peripherals, software developers, smartphone industry and various other media players. This is complicated by the various players in the multi-billion industry that are constantly competing for customers. The competition is fierce to an extent that a failure to adopt the best marketing strategy may lead to a flop in the business. While some companies have chosen to make their products more complex, Apple through its former CEO Steve Jobs chose simplicity over sophistication (The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited, 2011). This strategy was motivated by the advertisement campaign of "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". Steve job believed that certain features were not very necessary while those which were necessary were supposed to be made better and efficient.

Apple Inc. Overview

Apple International Corporation is a technology company known for its simplicity of the menus in their products making their products one of the easy to use yet one of the most secured if the recent revelation that American FBI could not log into their phone that was passcode protected is anything to go by (Arash, 2016). The company deals in the manufacture of iPhones which is a line of smartphones, Marc, which is a desktop computer, personal computers portable digital music players and related software, accessories, and networking solutions. It is a communication and media devices manufacturer with strong customer loyalty in the US especially with regards to its line of iPhones. It is, however, experiencing increasing competition from the South Korea-based Samsung among others in the international market and even in America (GSMarena, 2016).

Apple Int. and Simplicity (Simple is the Ultimate Sophistication)

The company is reputable as one that champions of simplicity but with quality features that dwell on the security of the customers’ information, a belief that has been incorporated as a policy in the company since the time of Steve Jobs. When the former CEO, joined the company, he removed most of the product lines to enforce his belief in the policy of robust features and simplicity (Walter, 2012). He argued that the company should focus on a narrow range of products and make them efficient. The CEO through his management style introduced the culture of hard work and efficiency in the manufacturing process of the company. An example of such cases is when he insisted to the engineer who designed Macintosh to reduce the time the device was taking to boot, which to the engineer was initially not possible but ended up reducing it by 28 seconds (Walter, 2012). Since then, the company has been known to be a champion of simplicity in the industry but also a provider of customer needs

Rationale for Campaign Strategy

The former CEO Steve believed that customers can only "fall in love" with their computers if they can master their way around its functionalities. This to a great extent informed the simplification and redesign of most Apple products. It is reported that Steve did not want to worry about the sophistication of other competitors with regards to features. However, he cared about the design of the package of the Apple's products. He placed a lot of emphasis on how Apple's products were to be finished stressing that it is the simple things like that that matter to customers and not the sophistication of the features which he claimed only made it hard for customers to master (Stephen & Barbara, 2012). This meant simple in features but sophisticated in design, and simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Apple has fared pretty well since the implementation of simplicity in its product lines choosing to improve the necessary features and doing away with features that only makes product complex but with no obvious performance significance. Customers who observe that the company's products satisfy their expectation regarding what is important in a product will, assuming other factors are kept constant, remain loyal to the company and its products. Huge customer base means more profit for the company. For example, since the advertising campaign of "Simplicity is the ultimate Sophistication" began, the company has moved from a poor performer to one that takes in over US$ 100 Million annual sales revenues (Stephen & Barbara, 2012). This shows just how effective this campaign together with other advertisement and operations were.

Evaluation of the Campaign concerning Advertising Concepts and Frameworks

Advertising frameworks can be divided into four; sales framework which is based on the notion that the determinant factor of the effectiveness of sales is it's the level of sales achieved. Then there is the persuasion framework which assumes that advertising works by convincing people through a series of steps relying on the assumption that buyers are rational. Involvement framework works by drawing people into the advertisement making people associate themselves with a given product because of the appeal of the advertisement. Finally, the salience framework based on the notion that advertising works by setting itself as unique among other products. Thus, may be informed of a bright logo or anything that makes it unique (Drypen, 2008).

Most of not all advertisements of Apple products during "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" campaign were related to almost all the above four advertising concepts. For example, the advertisements were all aimed at making Apple products as unique. This is why they used unique advertisements for their products. To show how simple their products were, there is an advertisement where a kid is serving customers using a Mac computer. This was to show how simple such products are to an extent even kids could find their ways around them (Buster, 2012).

Advertisement of Mac Computers was also another one of the many advertisements to reinforce the simplicity campaign. The company while trying to portray Mac as the best alternative to other desktop computers, explained to the audience what they needed to understand about Mac that made it the better alternative. The advertisement was based on simplicity and efficiency of Mac and led to an increase of 42% of market share during that same year (Stephen & Barbara, 2012). The advertisement maximized on the knowledge that customers sometimes need to be taken through a particular product's features in a way they can best understand it and make an informed opinion about it (Lindsay, 2015). This shows how sales and salience framework were utilized.

A particularly interesting advertisement about Mac was a May 2009: Apple "Elimination" advertisement where a woman goes to buy a computer and is confronted with many PCs and one Mac. As the woman continues to explain her preferred specifications, the number of PCs reduce until they are no more, but Apple's Mac remains. This shows how a single Apple's product could perform most of the functions that can be found in in one PC (Lindsay, 2015). Such advertisements observe the need for using the most efficient communication model that get the intended information to the right audience without distorting it. It also reflected the salience advertising framework by portraying the product as unique.

This was also employed in the iPod advertisement that came with a simple line of "A thousand songs in your pocket." The message is clear and precise with no possibility of being distorted. Since the iPod was purposely designed to play as many songs as possible, using that phrase just confirmed the purpose to the customer (David, 2013). Steve was a fanatic of simplicity and believed in it. He implemented this in the company's product lines choosing to stick to as few product lines as possible. While Apple only has about six laptop models, competitors like Dell, HP, and Samsung just to mention a few, have almost tripled that number each.

Such kinds of advertisements can be argued to be in line with the AIDA advertisement model. In this model, any advertisement is supposed to command attention, create interest, and then build a desire to own the product then the action of purchasing the product (Brierley, 2002). Apple is a superior brand image and by making the message so obvious by tailor-making the advertisements as in the scenarios above, many customers tend to associate with the product depicted in the advertisement thus showing involvement and persuasion frameworks (Drypen, 2008).

When introducing iOS products, they were criticized by industry players as a single primitive app at a time. The company, however, decided to soldier on choosing to focus on the battery life, and simplicity of use, ignoring the need to support flash functionality, doing away with the floppy disk drives. With time even those who criticized the company began manufacturing PCs without the floppy drives. This made them look like copying Apple while on the other hand potraying Apple as the game changer and leader.Apple's main target was to produce products that can be used by even the oldest people a characteristic that calls for simplicity.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication advertisement campaign is and may continue to witness success in the future. This means that Apple Company may be successful in the future should it continue on the same path. However, this doesn't mean they can't come up with other advertisement campaigns. In fact, "Think Different" is another successful advertisement campaign created after the former. They have to be complemented with robust and straightforward advertisement for the information to reach the audience without getting distorted. The success of the company may however, be compromised should the company choose to bow to the pressure from detractors pressuring the company to produce many products lines like other companies. While succumbing to such pressure may make those techno savvy individuals happy because they have a lot to choose from, the company will suffer image destruction. It will no longer be unique to customers. Besides, with more product lines, customers will be indifferent on what to buy thereby reducing revenues of the company as customers' decisions become less predictable.

Currently, the company's staffs are well conversant with their products which make it easier for them to explain the same to customers. Customers too, understand the products quite easily because of their simplicity and few models. Increasing the number of models of a given product or even other products may even make this process of customer product interaction harder.

The company should maintain its current policy of simplicity by focusing on what is needed rather than what can be made. Basing their production on human psychology is the better way to catching people's attention and winning their loyalty through time. The same applies to its marketing strategy where the company ensures its products only get serviced at Apple store. Its products are made mostly of adhesives, unlike its competitors who use screws. This makes it hard to be repaired by any third party except at Apple's store, which means the company's agents get time to interact with the customer and probably offer them more products. This is a good strategy, however, keeping a database of its customers will even make them easier to trace after purchase. Moreover, the company should consider making a provision for automatic or remote update of any functionality they wish in their products. Making such a feature available increases customer's preference of the products and hence loyalty. Such may be attractive also to new buyers.