Steve Jobs’ opinion about Marketing

To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It’s a very noisy world. And we’re not gonna get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us. Now Apple fortunately is one of half-a-dozen best brands in the whole world. Right up there with Nike, Disney, Coke, Sony, it is one of the greats of the greats. Not just in this country, all around the world. But, even a great brand needs investment and caring if it’s gonna retain its relevance and vitality, and Apple brand has clearly suffered from neglect in this area in the last few years, and we need to bring it back. The way to do that is not to talk about speeds and fees. It’s not to talk about bits and mega-hertz. It’s not to talk about why we are better than Windows. The dairy industry tried for 20 years to convince you that milk was good for you. It’s a lie, but they tried anyway. And the sales were going like this, and then they tried “Got Milk?”, and the sales were going like this. Got Milk wasn’t even talking about the product, in fact, it focuses on the absence of the product. But, the best example of all, and one of the greatest jobs of marketing that the universe has ever seen, is Nike. Remember, Nike sells commodity. They sell shoes. And yet when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company. In their ads, as you know, they don’t ever about their product. They don’t ever tell you about their air soles, and why we are better than Reebok’s air soles. What does Nike do in their advertising? They honor great athletes, and they honor great athletics. That’s who they are, and that’s what they are about. Apple spends a fortune on advertising. You’d never know it. You’d never know it. So when I got here, Apple just fired their agency, and there was a competition with 23 agencies that you know four years from now we could pick one, and we blew that up, and hired Chiat Day. The ad agency that I was fortunate enough to work with years ago, and created some award winning work, including the commercial voted the best ad ever made, 1984, by advertising professionals. And, we started working about eight weeks ago, and the question we asked was “Our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for. Where do we fit in this world?” What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. We do that better than almost anybody, in some cases. But, Apple is about something more than that. Apple at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe. And, we have had the opportunity to work with people like that. We’ve had the opportunity to work with people like you with software developers, with customers, who have done it in some big, in some small ways. And, we believe that in this world people can change the world for the better. And, that those people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones that actually do. And, so what we’re going to do in our first brand marketing campaign in several years is to get back to that core value. A lot of things have changed. The market is in a total different place than where it was a decade ago. And, Apple is totally different, and Apple’s place in it is totally different, and believe me, the products, and the distribution strategy and the manufacturing are totally different, and we understand that. But, values and core values, those things shouldn’t change. The things that Apple believed in at its core are the same things Apple really stands for today, and so we wanted to find a way to communicate this, and what we have is something that I’m very moved by. It honors those people who have changed the world. Some of them are living, some of them are not, but the ones that aren’t as you’ll see, you’ll know that if they ever used a computer it would have been a Mac. And, the theme of the campaign is “Think Different” It’s honoring the people who think different, and move this world forward, and it is what we are about, it touches the soul of this company. So I’m gonna go ahead and roll it, and I hope you feel the same way about I do.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes are the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward. And, while some may see them as crazy ones. We see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

아주 유명한 소설가(어느 소설가였는지 기억은 안나지만)의 문하생들에게는 이런 일이 생긴다.

그 소설가는 밑으로 들어오는 문하생들에게 한동안 소설을 써서 가져오라고 한다. 근데 그게 3년이 되는 시점까지인데, 그 3년 동안 가져오는 소설마다 읽어보지도 않고 다 찢어버린다고 한다. 순간의 주저함도 없이 찢어버린다고. 

이 얘기를 들었던게 내가 스무살 때였던가 그랬는데, 그 때는 도무지 이 이야기가 의미하는 바를 도저히 알지 못했다. 심지어 이 얘기를 해준 사람조차도 이해를 못했다. 근데 다시금 이 얘기를 떠올려보니 이제는 알 것 같다.

바로 '내가 좋아하는 이야기'가 아닌 '독자가 좋아하는 이야기'를 써야 한다는 것이다.

이것이 비단 소설가에게만 적용되겠는가. 미술가에게도 적용되고, 시인에게도, 장사꾼에게도, 사업가에게도 적용된다.

그렇게 문하생은 3년 동안 시행착오를 겪으며 내 안의 거품을 다 빼내고 나서야 비로소 타인이 원하는게 무엇인지 보이게 되는 것이다.

최고의 품질을 지향하는 만큼, No라는 말을 많이 할 수 밖에 없게 된다.

하나의 제품을 만드는 데는 굉장히 많은 내부인력, 협력사, 파트너, 하청업체들과 협업을 할 수 밖에 없게 되는데, 그들과 일을 진행함에 있어서 참 여러번 '그래 이 정도면 됐지 뭐, 그래 좋게 좋게 넘어가자'라는 생각이 악마의 유혹처럼 계속 들려온다. 그 때마다 뿌리치고 '안된다. 이거 수정해라. 저거 수정해라' 하면서 끝까지 단 하나의 디테일도 놓치지 않는다는게 참 쉬운 일이 아니구나. 그 와중에 비협조적인 태도를 보이는 이들이 유발하는 극도의 스트레스도 견뎌야 하는구나.