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In Marketing—Don’t Tell Me Your Story, Tell Me Mine
Posted on September 12th, 2011 By Mark Smith 4 Comments So Far
There is no question that Apple is a company that gets plenty of attention. With a history of innovation under legendary CEO (now Board Chairman) Steve Jobs, a stock valuation that recently exceeded that of Exxon Mobil, and revolutionary products such as the iPhone and iPad, there are clearly many ways to measure Apple’s success.
All of this makes it very interesting to look at how Apple chooses to share its product messaging. Take, for example, this recent TV commercial for the iPad2.
Apple could have chosen to talk about what a great company it is, provide details on how its product features exceed those of other tablets, or showcase a celebrity endorsement. But it didn’t. Instead, it chose to focus on you and me—sharing its understanding of our world and what’s important to us. Our families, our hobbies, our work, our future.
Apple’s marketing brilliance should not go overlooked in its list of accomplishments. Apple knows that at the end of the day, we don’t really care that it is a great company with great products. We care about what is happening in our lives and how to make them better. So Apple doesn’t try to tell us its story, it tells us how it fits into our story.
That’s an important thing to keep in mind in marketing, whether through traditional channels or social media. Finding ways to show how your company and its products fit into your customers’ stories will help turn a good marketing message into a great one. Keeping the focus on what’s important to your customers will also help your company avoid the practice of just broadcasting messages about itself, which will very often result in your listeners tuning out.
We can all take a page from Apple’s playbook—it’s obviously a good one! Let’s not tell someone our story, let’s tell them theirs.
Tags: apple, branding, ipad2, Marketing, steve jobs, story
Posted in Brands |