AppleInsider:
Speaking in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, as cited by Business Insider, Segall argues that Apple today is missing that aura that Steve Jobs created, which made customers “lust” for the company’s products.
“The passing of Steve Jobs created a completely different approach to marketing which we can see the results of,” Segall said. “As a marketer, I look at that and can see the difference between Steve being there — and not being there — very clearly.”
“These days, Apple does a different campaign for a different phone, which I always thought was a lost opportunity,” Segall told the newspaper. “They should be building a personality for the phone, a thing that people might want to be part of because it rises above the features of the moment.” He went on to argue that Tim Cook is operating with the advice of those around him, who are “a little vanilla.”
It could be argued that Apple is no longer the company that Segall used to work for in the sense they are not the “scrappy underdog” any more. They are a fully mature, consumer electronics company that no longer needs to be “edgy”.
That being said, I prefer Apple edgy.
Just a little further down in the article is this:
“2002, the year the Think Different campaign wrapped up, Apple posted a first quarter profit of $38 million on $1.38 billion of revenue and shipped 746,000 Macs. In the first quarter of 2018, Apple posted a profit of just over $20 billion, on revenue of $88.3 billion and sold 5.1 million Macs”
It’s hard to be “edgy” when you’re the most valuable company in the world. Trying can actually hurt – it threatens to become self-parody.
“Edgy” means something different to almost everyone who uses the word. Apple is indeed a different company from the one Segall knew, and Apple’s potential market is just as different.
All points about Apples market position aside, there is truth in his statement about being “vanilla.” No, Apple doesn’t need to be edgy. However, their ads don’t need to be pedestrian either. They can still be clever and have a spark of personality.
Apple occasionally nails an ad, say the Homepod ad with Spike Jonze. But they’re not as memorable as they once were, and they don’t have the same wit. Steve Jobs was unmatched in showmanship and being naturally witty. I don’t expect Cook and Schiller to be operating the same. But I do miss it. Apples modern attempts at wit have largely become somewhat cringey. I really hate to say it, but thats how I feel.
I do not think so, and I do not think of Apple as ever being edgy, Apple as a brand does crave for distinctiveness, though.
Being distinctive is always a feature in itself. Apple cannot afford to be diluted in the average’s sea.
It is the same to say that Joyce should have not wrote Finnegans Wake after Ulysses, Hell he had nothing to prove.
It’s a simple matter of fact that Apple can’t really be edgy any more, because edgy implies a niche appeal, and Apple is a mass appeal company now.
I’d like to see what Apple would have become today with Jobs still alive, but that’s not what we have. Apple is a different kind of success than it was in 2012.
That is how empires crumble, they forget how they got there, how they became successful.
If Apple tried to be ‘edgy” pretty sure the comments would be, “Cringeworthy, act your age”. They used the word courage and the fainting was almost immediate.
It’s important to note that the segment of the market that actually see these ads has narrowed dramatically over the years. I don’t think the “edgy” demographic is seeing or paying attention to a lot of ads.
Sadly, that is largely true. It is also the reason that the “moat” – effectively a euphemism for monopoly power – has become the currency of the business world. A moat can make it very difficult for competition to recover or develop against you. Apple is now a mature company with a fast-developing moat and is just too mainstream to pull off “edgy.”