Seven steps to Apple's marketing mastery

USA Today printed a great article on Friday about Apple's marketing savvy. The big money quote was from Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie, who said that the iPhone launch generated about $400 million in free publicity for Apple, an unprecedented amount.

But the meat of the article was more intriguing. Using analysis from a variety of marketing professors, USA Today distilled out seven marketing tactics that put Apple's marketing head and shoulders above any other company in high technology. Those seven tactics were:

1. Make innovative products. This one is a "Duh.", but clearly is the foundation of what makes any company great. Bad products never make a good business.


2. Keep it simple. This factor differentiates Apple from nearly every other company in the uber-geeky high tech industry. Simplicity sells to everyone from high-school dropouts to Ph.Ds who just don't have time to hassle with products that take hours to figure out and debug.


3. Create truly memorable ads. Amazingly, Apple spends less on airtime for its ads than its competitors do, choosing instead to invest in developing and refining ads that bolster and burnish its brand (how's that for alliteration?). It's just like Apple products: they don't worry about distribution until they've made something great.


4. Find an enemy. I don't completely agree with this one. Apple doesn't so much attack enemies as emphasize differentiation with other companies. It isn't afraid to name names, though, and that sets it apart from most other high-tech firms. But this is really more about being different than tearing down competitors.


5. Work the taste-makers. Apple pays to make get its products into the hands of analysts, movie stars (remember the iPods in the goody bags at the Oscars?), and decision makers [Aside: Apple is also one of the few high-tech firms that tracks its loaner gear assiduously and asks for it back. Compare that with the Vista laptop giveaway fiasco from Microsoft in terms of brand building]. It also emphasizes premium product placement in high-demographic shows like 24, Sex and the City, Seinfeld, and others. The company is undoubtedly looking for just the right venue to place its first iPhones on TV next fall. Expect to see them on the hottest upscale shows.


6. Offer surprises. I've written previously that Apple's secrecy about unannounced products adds about $600 to $700 million to its bottom line just from increased PR coverage. Secrecy and surprises drive buzz -- so long as you exceed everyone's expectations in the end.


7. Put on a show. One of my continuing themes in this blog has been about Steve Jobs exceptional willingness to distill, focus, and present a corporate message effectively. This doesn't happen by accident -- it happens through months of hard, detailed work behind closed doors to get everything exactly right. And yet the billionaire CEO of Apple still spends the last few days leading up to a keynote rehearsing over and over again to make it all come alive. Would that all executives focused as much on communicating the benefits and value of products their companies have spent billions developing.

I've written previously about the marketing wisdom in the recent book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It's no accident that at least three of these seven essential elements of Apple's marketing correspond directly to the key qualities of ideas made to stick. There's no magic to Apple's marketing other than a near obsession with getting both the products and the marketing right. And that one differentiator is probably more important than any of the others.

Full disclosure: The author is long Apple stock at the time of writing.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Apple, Communication, Made to Stick, Marketing, Presentations, Product placement, Public Relations, Secrecy, Stories, USA Today