Making consumers love your brand is the ultimate goal of any marketer. Apple, especially in today;s context, is often held as an example of a brand that is loved. I read an article in a recent Scientific American magazine that underscores the power of the Apple brand.

Apple recently held a cruise event called MacMania 10 where 102 macphiles, as they call themselves, paid good money to hobnob with fellow macphiles for a week!

The week long interactions also offered an opportunity to discuss what could be better with apple products as well.

As I finished reading the article, I was even more impressed with the way in which the company has built its brand. The takeaways were that, it is important to persist with your vision and way of thinking. It is easy to now talk admiringly about apple and its products, but there were times when the company’s vision and strategy were truly tested.

The company and its founder stood their ground, and banked on innovation to see them through.

The other aspect that stood out for me is really about building a community of loyalists who then become your biggest ambassadors.

I would welcome your views on building likeable brands.

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Apple is officially the most valuable technology company in the world, having overtaken the market cap of Microsoft by $2B. This definitely underscores the changing equations in the global tech arena. For sometime now, Microsoft has been on the defensive with the rising influence of Google on one side and Apple on the other. What makes Apple’s achievement remarkable is that the DNA , strategy, and approach of Apple is so different from Microsoft’s. Apple, as well as its visionary and maverick founder Steve Jobs, have seen ups and downs. It is a huge tribute to Jobs’ conviction, vision and customer centric approach that the company stuck to what it believed in, and over the last few years has altered the rules of the game on its own terms.

From the days when the Mac was perceived to be an expensive but nice to have comp meant for a niche audience, the Apple brand is now ubiquitous, what with every teenager ( and non-teenager) yearning to own an ipod/ iphone or an ipad!

As Jobs tweeted a couple of days ago, the future of computing is not Apple vs Microsoft, it is Apple vs Google. It would be interesting to see how the balance of power between the tech trio plays out in the near future. After all, one cannot just write off Microsoft. Let us hope competition brings out the best yet in them…..

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For years I have drooled over Apple’s Macs, though each time I have had to actually buy a desktop or a laptop, I have settled for a PC – mainly because of the cost.  I have been hoping that Apple would move into the lower end of the market one day, and this continuing recession made me hopeful that soon Apple too would finally capitulate. 

However, this seems unlikely.  I read recently that for computers priced over $1000, Apple’s share was a staggering 89%!  Though this excludes  sales to large companies (where PCs are still preferred),  it does show that Apple is raking in the profits. 

With its high prices that it  refuses to lower, Apple is ignoring large sections of the market.  Steve Jobs has been almost disdainful of the low end of the market when he said, “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk.”  So far this strategy of stubborn luxury seems to be working, but I wonder how long it will last.  Apple rules in design, so maybe until another beautifully designed yet cheaper challenger comes along?

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Everyone marketer has a view on this- how much your company’s logo can help bolster your brand. Our view at Prayag has always been that, especially for a B2B context, the logo is a necessary ingredient in creating a brand, but much depends on how it is publicised.

I came across an article in the Fortune magazine which had an interesting analysis on some logo makeovers, and whether they had actually helped or hindered in the brand building exercise.

Of the make overs that have worked big time, Apple and IBM top the list, while Kraft’s efforts have not quite worked. Xerox and Pepsi’s changed logos have also been questioned.

Which brings us to an important insight- in  visual rebranding exercises, the negative impact if the exercise does not create the intended market perception far outweighs the positive impact when it does.

Do check out the full article    http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0908/gallery.new_logos_redesigns.fortune/index.html

it is worth a read!

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The recent news on Steve Jobs’ illness and absence from work, and the consequent adverse impact it has had in the market on Apple’s future leads us to ponder a very important question on the merits and demerits of personality led brand building.

Let us start with Apple itself- a brand that is synonymous with  its legendary CEO- the challenge they now face is that the market is not convinced about an Apple without Jobs- as someone said- it is hard to imagine an apple without its core! Which begs the question, should a multi-multi billion dollar company like Apple, which is over 3 decades old, still have its brand linked so strongly to its founder?

The issue is, whenever you have a charismatic leader, it makes sense to build your brand around him or her- Bill Gates and Narayana Murthy are examples cited often of personalities who played a significant role in building the brands of their respective organizations. But what these two did right is to choose a time to step back and allow for an institutionalization of the brand building process.

So, that is an important lesson that companies can learn from this episode. Use your CEO to build the brand, but pick a time to broaden the approach.

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