Apple's Essay Covers History, Marketing Strategy, And Latest Products. (70 Characters)

Marketing Strategies of Apple

Question:

Discuss about the Integrated Marketing Communication for Apple iPhone and Apple Mac.

Apple is one of the world’s largest companies that has been manufacturing gadgets. The company started with its humble beginning when its two founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded the company in a garage in United States (Isaacson, 2012). Todays the company produces and manufactures some of the most sought after products in the gadgets genre like the Apple iPhone, Apple Mac, Apple TV which is recently launched and the latest craze the Apple watch.  The company has been doing its marketing totally right which has led to such immense growth in such short time period. Of course there have been great contribution of the marketing and innovative ideas of Steve Jobs who is respected as one of the most respected marketing Gurus in modern times, however the company has a great team of marketing experts who has continued the growth of the company and did not allow some of the controversies to reduce the pace of the growth.

The company in the very beginning when it was producing the mother boards had marketed its products very efficiently in whatever ways they could. The first major Apple product which turned the fortunes of the company called the McIntosh which was the first personal computer from the company, had been very successful because of the campaign that surrounded the product. People were waiting for it to come out (Thomke & Feinberg, 2012).

It was the year 1984 that McIntosh was first released and the product was aimed at reducing the complexity which was involved in operating a computer and it was successfully conveyed in the advertisements that Apple published in various mediums. One of the advertisement displayed a mouse with three buttons and people were excited to see this new product being launched.

References:

Isaacson, W. (2012). The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs. Harvard business review, 90(4), 92-102.

Thomke, S. H., & Feinberg, B. (2012). Design thinking and innovation at Apple. Harvard Business School Publishing.

“Apple, like many companies, devoted considerable effort to maintaining its corporate image. One tactic involved presenting writers with material on the company, like Jean Richardson and Rene White's 1980 "Apple Computer" corporate backgrounder. Another involved regulating press access to Apple employees, and vice versa: Barbara Krause's Inquiries from the Press summarizes company policy.”

Apple was successful in introducing one of the first integrated marketing campaigns in the history by publishing in the newspapers, giving television advertisements and Steve Jobs personally appearing for interviews and talking about the new products. The Apple McIntosh computers aimed at bringing computers for normal people so that everyone could use it. The Graphic User Interface worked well in this regards.

Success of McIntosh Computers

In the coming years it became a craze of the Apple fans to wait for Steve Jobs to appear before the crowd and introduce a new product. This trend is now continued by the present Apple CEO Tim Cook has continued the trend of appearing before the audience once a year and introduce the new Apple products especially the new IPhone that is launched every year (Hunter et al., 2012). The marketing strategy of Apple has been to involve people in a way that they feel to be a part of the new products launches and that they wait for new products to be launched and Tim Cook has continued it (Richtel & Chen, 2014). Every year Apple Inc. launches its new version of iPhone, this can be hardly matched by any other company, to launch a single series of product every year with new features and expecting people to buy it. Integrated marketing communication has worked wonder for Apple in this regards and the loyal Apple iPhone customers do not hesitate to buy new phones paying a hefty price, this is because the aura Apple has created around its products through its marketing campaigns.

References:

Hunter, S. T., Cushenbery, L., Fairchild, J., & Boatman, J. (2012). Partnerships in leading for innovation: A dyadic model of collective leadership. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 5(4), 424-428.

Richtel, M., & Chen, B. X. (2014). Tim Cook-Making Apple His Own. New York Times, Technology, 15. 

Death of Steve Jobs due to prolonged illness had a big impact on Apple, as Steve Jobs himself was a factor who could draw half of the crowd without any marketing, such was his personal charisma. He has been viewed as one of the most prominent innovators and leaders both in the field of marketing and in the field of technological innovations. He introduced the system of launching new products and marketing them in a integrated manner.

The integrated marketing communication around Apple watch was one of the most prominent and innovative integrated marketing communication campaign that has been ever taken up by any technological company. The launch of Apple watch was announced from months before and people were waiting for the product to be launched and then on the launch date there big advertisements in the newspapers, the internet was full of Apple watch advertisements, all the blogs that dealt with tech news has one single point agenda to talk about, the Apple watch. In the big malls and departmental stores the Apple watch was there for people to try and experience firsthand (Rawassizadeh Price & Petre, 2015). The existing iPhone users were all updated and notified again and again to buy the latest Apple watch.

Marketing of Apple Watch

“Apple introduced the world to several category-defining products, the Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “And once again Apple is poised to captivate the world with a revolutionary product that can enrich people’s lives. It’s the most personal product we’ve ever made.” (Apple.com, 2016)

“With Apple Watch, we’ve developed multiple technologies and an entirely new user interface specifically for a device that’s designed to be worn. It blurs the boundary between physical object and user interface,” said Jony Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of Design. “We’ve created an entire range of products that enable unparalleled personalization.” (Apple.com, 2016)

It is evident that how the people directly responsible for the products and who came from the topmost rung of the company were personally engaged in marketing the products.

References:

Apple.com. (2016). Apple Unveils Apple Watch—Apple’s Most Personal Device Ever. Apple Newsroom. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from https://www.apple.com/in/newsroom/2014/09/09Apple-Unveils-Apple-Watch-Apples-Most-Personal-Device-Ever/

Rawassizadeh, R., Price, B. A., & Petre, M. (2015). Wearables: Has the age of smartwatches finally arrived?. Communications of the ACM, 58(1), 45-47.

The launch of the first iPhone has been characterized by great public attention and people wanting to understand what it felt like using a mobile phone that was more innovative and user friendly than any other device made till date. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs had again and again confirmed that how much importance the company gave to the factor “simplicity”. According to Jobs one of the main driving forces and characteristic features that has helped Apple to grow in such a small time was its simplicity, both in terms of design and in terms of usage (Isaacson, 2012). The products were aimed to be very easy to use but give maximum optimization capabilities. Now the problem was how this was to be conveyed to the potential customers all over the world. Here comes into play the factor of marketing strategy. Steve Jobs himself steered the initial marketing endeavors of Apple Inc. which became so successful that 74 days after its introduction the company announced that it has sold the One millionth iPhone. This was almost unimaginable in terms of volume.

Apple had applied several marketing communication strategies in order to gain such success in terms of business and to increase the goodwill of the company (Boone & Kurtz, 2013). Advertising, events, and promotional offers were later introduced. Today Apple have tied up with several telecom companies in order to increase its business, two of which are Airtel and Vodafone. Apple has introduced promotional offers like easy EMI options and cashback offers. The company has tied up with Airtel in several countries and theey are giving customers several benefits like lower tariff rates and discounts in mobile bills.

Importance of Simplicity in Apple Products

References:

Boone, L. E., & Kurtz, D. L. (2013). Contemporary marketing. Cengage learning.

Isaacson, W. (2012). The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs. Harvard business review, 90(4), 92-102. 

The latest product of Apple is its iPhone X. “Our vision has always been to create an iPhone that is entirely screen. One so immersive the device itself disappears into the experience. And so intelligent it can respond to a tap, your voice and even a glance. With iPhone X, that vision is now a reality. Say hello to the future.” This is the official statement of Apple in its website about the iPhone X (Apple.com, 2018). The marketing strategy was to induce the urge in the potential customers to make it impossible for them not to buy the product. The iPhone X is branded as a product of the future. It has some of the features that is not found in other phones in the planet. The marketing strategy that has been taken including the promotional videos of the phone in YouTube and the experience that it gives it is termed as not just a phone but a “phenomenon” in itself. It is an “experience”, that one must use to understand. Technological experts have concluded that the product is more of a status symbol than a gadget that will assist its users to ease their daily problems. Apple presented the product in a way that people who are interested in technology and gadgets not only they will buy the products, but people who do not understand technology well but are interested in high ends lifestyle products to match their status symbol will also tend to buy it.

Apple took up a very different but innovative strategy during its launch, it allowed access of the iPhone X to some popular tech gurus in YouTube. They reviewed the product in a very short time that did not allow them to understand the flaws well, and as launch date was near the product was already a hit and people waiting anxiously for it to launch.

References:

Apple.com. (2018). iPhone X. Apple.com. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from https://www.apple.com/in/iphone-x/?&muid=528C4450-05E0-421C-A64E-89560ABA0900&mtid=20925st142673&aosid=p238&cid=wwa-in-kwgo-iphone-slid-&mnid=sIugfsdnO-dc_mtid_20925st142673_pcrid_230229655339_

Apple previously never used the reviews and comments of any other entity in its press release. However, this time Apple had changed some aspects of its integrated marketing communication strategy and included the reviews from popular tech reviewers, newspapers and media giants in its press release. “The best iPhone yet”, “Like Magic”, “This feels like the future” were some of the reviews from trusted sources which themselves had goodwill in the market. 

Apple also adopted a policy of slow roll out of products and encouraged waiting from the part of the customers. The less time given to the reviewers had already made a situation where much flaws could not be detected, and now slow launch of the product had helped in maintaining the quality. When these strategies were already in place the company had continued to advertise the product all over the place including the internet. All the social media platforms were filled with advertisements and reviews about the iPhone X. The newspapers had large advertisements and the hoardings in the big cities featured the product in gigantic sizes. Apple understood that the people were already aware of the technological specifications of Apple, it was a waste to again reemphasize on the fact that Apple X had highly advanced technological specifications. Therefore, Apple this time highlighted the “entertainment” quotient of the product and the launch videos and the various other advertisements talked about the screen of the phone, the sound, the experience of the users in gaming, clicking photos or shooting videos (Forbes.com, 2018). Apple encouraged short documentary film makers to use iPhone for their shooting. Therefore, the product was more of a high end multimedia gadget rather than a tool to connect. The integrated marketing communication strategy was very successful in this case and the product continues to be sold in large numbers all around the world.

References:

Forbes.com (2018). Apple iPhone X: The Mid-Term Review. Ten Things To Love Or Hate. (2017). Forbes.com. Retrieved 24 March 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2017/12/10/apple-iphone-x-the-mid-term-review-ten-things-to-love-or-hate/&refURL=https://www.google.co.in/&referrer=https://www.google.co.in/