Apple has earned the reputation as one of the most admired brands — and envied companies — in the world. For the third year in a row Apple ranked as the world’s most admired company, by the highest margin ever. But this didn’t happen overnight, and it’s not just because Steve Jobs is one of the world’s most admired CEOs. There are several factors that account for Apple’s continuing success as a market innovator.

A key element of Apple’s strategic playbook is its relentless pursuit of consumer-delighting innovation:

What makes Apple so admired? Product, product, product. This is the company that changed the way we do everything from buy music to design products to engage with the world around us. Its track record for innovation and fierce consumer loyalty translates into tremendous respect across business’ highest ranks.

As BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer puts it, “The whole world held its breath before the iPad was announced. That’s brand management at its very best.”

— Fortune Magazine, March 4, 2010

Apple’s success is not due to some secret sauce that only Steve Jobs can formulate. (Although he is a critical ingredient.)

Shared Strategic Values: Innovation, Excellence, Consumer Delight

Another factor is Apple’s remarkably cohesive corporate culture, one that actively fosters a set of shared values and beliefs among employees and partners. Central to that culture is a common understanding and passionate commitment to what it takes to deliver just the right set of capabilities and experiences to delight consumers.

This is not a corporate culture dominated by bean counters, risk-avoiding lawyers, or design committees whose negotiated compromises inevitably lead to boring products and mediocrity. It’s a culture that’s comfortable with using the words “passion” and “excellence” in everyday conversation.

These values fuel the creative juices and passionate collaborations that deliver award-winning products and services year after year.

A Strategic Commitment to Excellence

Over dinner recently with a fellow Apple alum, we talked about the fact that Apple’s remarkable success did not spring up overnight (even though most of the popular press seems to believe that). Apple’s achievement results from 30 years’ dogged pursuit of excellence, as defined by a design aesthetic that embraces simplicity, the perfect balance of form and function, and an experience strategy that engineers out the “friction points” that cause frustration or hassle in the environments or usage situations where Apple’s products compete.

We told each other stories of encounters between Apple marketers and product engineers, or designers and Steve Jobs — all of which underscored the lengths to which Apple will go to ensure product quality and innovation. Design as strategy… Some of our anecdotes came from our own experience as Apple employees; some were recent stories she’d heard from a cousin who works as an Apple product engineer today.

What struck us was how similar the themes were from our experiences at Apple in the late 1980’s, and the Apple of today. That’s a sign of a consistent, enduring corporate culture.

Apple “Thinks Different”

Apple’s culture offers a startling contrast to that of most public companies, the ones that settle for “just good enough.” Or worse, companies like BP that push cost-cutting to the point of unacceptable societal risk, with long-term deleterious consequences for shareholders and the public alike.

If you’ve been lucky enough to work in a corporate culture like Apple and contribute to products that change the world, worklife afterwards can be an incredibly painful experience — coping with the commonplace world of “just good enough…”

I wish more companies would take steps to emulate what’s best about Apple’s strategy.

Early Days

25 years ago Apple and a handful of partners ignited the digital publishing revolution. I was there, a senior member of Apple’s pioneering team, along with visionaries and change agents from Adobe, Aldus, Quark and others. Our work laid the foundations for digital content and publishing, key milestones on the road to the Web, social media, blogging, and other 21st century communications.

Idealists and visionaries, we would be providers of “enabling technologies” that would spawn new forms of digital content creation, expression, delivery and consumption. We would act as catalysts. Change agents, advocates, ambassadors.

We passionately believed that these changes would benefit society as a whole. After all, Apple’s corporate mantra at the time was “Changing the way people work, learn, live and play.”

But we would not have predicted that this transformation would take 25 years to unfold. Nor how disruptive it would be to everyone in the content ecosystem. And while we routinely used email (AppleLink) to communicate with partners and co-workers, we did not foresee the emergence of the Internet. We knew digital content would be transformative, but not how the changes would unfold.

Early Notions about Content and Digital Publishing

By 1989 we recognized that content, once created or captured in digital form, could be expressed and viewed across multiple media types. We had some fuzzy notions about digital assets, although no way to manage digital content. Internally we used words like “content,” “multimedia,” and “new media.” Most of the world thought we were crazy at the time… Including external marketing services providers, who fought our attempts to integrate and align their contributions to our integrated marketing campaigns…

Here’s a concept diagram excerpted from an internal Apple marketing plan, circa 1989. Our first attempt to popularize the idea that content could be created for multiple uses. This marketing plan was shared across the core marketing team, including trusted third party developers.

Laying the Groundwork

Early customer feedback suggested that open-minded, creative individuals would eagerly seize upon these new capabilities as a powerful means of self-expression. And that enterprises, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations would someday follow suit. Once the early adopters had worked out all the kinks…

We hoped our ideas would someday be embraced, but recognized that our strategic marketing challenge entailed category creation, market development, and on-going evangelism. Something few companies can afford to do on their own, so we tackled it with the help of “co-marketing partners” like Aldus, Adobe, and eventually HP, Microsoft and other like-minded developers.

Apple invested millions to associate its brand with all forms of creative expression, initially under the tagline “The Power to Be Your Best.” (TV spot via YouTube.)

While Apple’s ad agency produced high concept TV and print ads, our marketing team invested in more pragmatic tactics to persuade creative professionals and wannabe’s that digital content creation was possible. We knew we had to demonstrate and prove that both processes and results would be appropriate for many use cases and budgets. So we spent heavily on success stories, channel marketing and event marketing, to bring these concepts to life. Marketing via “proof points”… We celebrated our early adopters as heroes.

The first image above is the cover of a late 1980s sales tool for Apple’s US resellers. We knew that “seeing is believing,” and wanted to empower our dealers to show potential customers actual samples of what was then state-of-the-art for digital publishing. This was probably Apple’s most popular ever sales tool, one I saw chained to dealers’ countertops years later. (This book should probably be archived in the Smithsonian, given its importance to the early digital publishing revolution…)

The second image comes from the internal marketing plan for the “Expressions Campaign,” aimed at what we called “frequent communicators,” including professionals. Our first attempt at thinking about some of the ideas that Razorfish calls “nimble content.”

I came across an interesting blog post today about the differences between active versus passive discovery on the part of buyers and prospects, and what that implies for messaging architectures — and by implication, for outbound marketing plans.

Most of the tactics based on SEM and SEO aim at capturing the attention of shoppers engaged in active discovery. Which is cool, if people already know your brand, are aware of your current offers, and generally understand your brand promise or core value proposition. (In this context we’re talking about the buyer’s activities during the earlier phases of the marketing funnel.)

But what do marketers do if people are unaware of or unfamiliar with your brand? Or if you’re confronting damaging misperceptions about your product’s positioning, core benefits, price-to-value equation, etc.? Search alone is not enough.

Quick Explanation of Terms: Online Context

Active discovery

A buyer engages in active discovery when using Google or Bing to search for something in particular, such as which stores are offering a specific brand of fashion jeans at the best price. From the marketer’s standpoint this is the realm of search marketing. ‘Nuff said: there are a bazillion web resources on this subject.

Passive Discovery

Passive discovery occurs when the buyer didn’t know she was looking but found out about your brand (or offer) while visiting a web site and noticing your ad, seeing your message presented in the context of other search results, stumbling upon it while researching the category as a whole, etc.

The challenge for marketers is how best to leverage passive discovery in order to influence the buyer’s perceptions or emotional state as he moves through the purchasing process.

For B2B marketers Steve Woods (the author of the post I’m referencing) writes,

Passive messages are messages that would not be actively sought by potential buyers, such as messages that alter preconceived notions of reliability, applicability of a solution to a certain industry, and perceptions of product usability, service quality, or price point.

Woods says that marketers planning their messaging architecture need to think about how/when buyers are likely to encounter your messages, so you can anticipate and then create opportunities to benefit from passive as well as active discovery. He highly recommends the storytelling format as the mode most likely to be noticed and recalled.

So What’s the Answer?

Advertising?

Traditionally consumer marketers have resorted to various forms of advertising as “the way” to get in front of people when they’re not looking, but to do so in a way that would be memorable (and hopefully motivational). Once upon a time that kind of mass marketing worked … at least, better than its alternatives. These days, old-fashioned, out-of-context, interruption-based advertising is not an effective solution for capturing people’s attention when they’re not actively looking.

That is, it’s not the solution if you’re being held accountable to measured returns on marketing investment. Instead you’ve got to figure out how to make those messages available to the right people, at the right time, and in the right context. And despite all the advances in online display advertising over the past decade, we’re still in the early days of what’s possible when it comes to marketing effectiveness and ROI. [Disclosure: one of my clients is working on ways to meet the needs of under-served marketers who want to include more intelligent forms of online advertising in their marketing mix, especially when challenged by budgets that are too small to appeal to digital agencies.]

Word of Mouth?

Word-of-mouth is probably most effective in the context of active discovery, when you (as shopper) ask your friend what she thinks about her new Prius, or the nail salon that’s just opened up down the road.

All the wizards practicing social media marketing have lots to say on the subject of how to influence the people most likely to be influential when it comes to online word-of-mouth, so I won’t add to their wisdom here.

I do think the jury is still out when it comes to making social influencer marketing scalable and sustainable in the face of hard-to-prove concrete ROI. If the downturn continues,  hard-nosed bean counters are going to make it difficult for companies to staff up so they can operationalize social market-engagement models.  I think social has lots of promise, but it’s in its infancy when it comes to practicing this as a discipline that can be managed appropriately so it has a lasting effect on customer engagement and retention.

Other Sources

At the conceptual level there are some intriguing possibilities in Martin Lindstrom’s book Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. He spent several years and millions of dollars researching how the brain responds to advertising, product placements, and various communication techniques (such as symbols, stories, etc.). His findings are summarized in Buyology.

His application of neuroscience to communication effectiveness suggests some very interesting ideas, but taken too far, could also be scary…

Based on Lindstrom’s research Steve Woods’ recommendation that passive messages should be designed for transmission within stories is a good one.

Lessons from Apple & Evangelism

Lindstrom notes that communications techniques practiced by most established religions and cults are also highly effective when it comes to stimulating the brain to pay attention to or remember messages about brands and products. (And yes, those of us who have formerly worked for Apple’s marketing department are well aware of this…)

Here are the cross-denominational pillars of “marketing” as practiced by the world’s leading religions, according to Lindstrom in Buyology:

• A sense of belonging
• A clear vision
• Power over enemies
• Sensory appeal
• Storytelling
• Grandeur
• Evangelism
• Symbols
• Mystery
• Rituals

Just think about the launch of the iPad, as a case in point… It’s clear to me that these techniques are being deployed by Apple’s hype machine…

In a prior post I discussed my problems trying to replace Windows 7 Release Candidate on a MacBook Pro under Bootcamp. This weekend I took another shot at it, having found some posts that suggested my issues might be related to disk fragmentation.

Thanks to these posts, I was able to solve my blocking problems and reinstall Windows on my Mac in a Bootcamp partition:

• Gizmodo’s summary of how to install Windows 7 in Bootcamp, so you can run Windows 7 natively on your Mac
• A user’s “reluctant review” of iDefrag – learning by doing

Disk fragmentation was indeed the problem preventing Bootcamp from setting up a Windows-ready partition on my Mac. Once I had defragged the hard drive, Apple’s Bootcamp utility was easily able to set up and size a partition to accommodate Windows 7, and the Windows [clean] install proceeded normally. So now I’m back in business, running Windows 7 on a 3-year-old MacBook Pro.

Defragging a Mac

To make this possible I purchased and downloaded a copy of iDefrag from Coriolis Systems (about $30). The process is fairly straightforward.

To defragment the Mac’s hard drive you have to make a small boot disk (on a CD or DVD) using a utility provided by Coriolis. Once you start up from this boot CD/DVD, it automatically launches the defrag utility. To get the best results for Bootcamp, select the “Compact” option (which is the default). Don’t use the “Quick” option.

On my system it took a couple of hours, but everything ran smoothly. (I started the utility and then went off for a hike.) iDefrag works just fine under Snow Leopard.

Word to the wise: It’s important to follow all the precautionary steps: backing up your hard drive, checking it via Disk Utility, etc., before initiating the defrag process.

In 20+ years of using Macs for business, this is the first time I’ve ever had to  run a defragmentation utility on a Mac hard drive — even though it’s a regular chore on my PCs. That’s probably the reason why it never dawned on me that all the error messages reported by Windows’ install program and Bootcamp were being caused by disk fragmentation. That and the fact that the error messages were so obscure, and so generic, that none pointed to fragmentation as a potential cause of the blocking issues.

One final note: you may get the impression from Microsoft’s marketing materials that you have to replace Windows 7 RC with Windows 7 Ultimate. If you can figure out how to do this as an upgrade, that’s perhaps the case. In my experience the process of using Windows 7 RC taught me that I don’t need the extra features of Ultimate, so I bought the non-upgrade version of Windows 7 Professional, and installed that on my Mac. It’s working just fine.

I’m just sorry I’ve had to spend 8 hours to get to this point, knowing I’ll have to repeat some of these steps (but not the defrag process) once I replace this MacBook Pro with a new generation model sometime this spring, as originally planned.

If you’ve been running Windows 7 RC on a MacBook Pro in a Bootcamp partition, beware. The path to reinstalling Windows 7 is fraught with problems, hassles, risks and time wasters.

Quick summary, if you don’t want to read the rest of this post. After several hours of effort each day, over several days, I am unable to reinstall Windows on my Mac. So I have given up until I buy a new computer to replace this one. [Editor's note: problem solved. See the March 8 post in this blog.]

Warning: If You Use Win 7 RC, You Must Take Action

As of March 1, Microsoft has ratcheted up the pressure on users to replace the RC  software.

Windows shuts itself down every 2 hours; software upgrades will no longer work. Given no advance warning, you cannot save your work before the system shuts down.

You will experience visual humiliation (like notices that your software is not genuine.) And even if you can withstand these hassles, by June 1 Windows 7 RC will not work at all.

Knowing this was going to happen, I began my journey last Friday to reinstall Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro. But first, the back story…

My Story

When I decided last summer to take my chances on the RC release, I did so knowing that I would have to take action in Q2 to replace the Windows 7 RC software.

No problem, I thought. By then Apple will have released the next generation MacBook Pro, I’ll decommission my current notebook, and transfer Mac OS X apps and files to the new one. (Super easy to do, Mac-to-Mac.) I’ll install a new copy of Windows 7 in a fresh new Bootcamp partition, and then I’ll reinstall all the Windows 7 apps and files. That way the hassles and down time will be relatively minimal.

Alas, my grand plan had some flawed assumptions.

My Journey

Problem #1: Apple has not yet released the next version of the MacBook Pro. Rumors abound that a release is imminent, but who knows when Apple will be ready to take an order and ship a new-gen MacBook Pro to my office.

Given the impact of frequent shutdowns every day, I felt there was no option but to take action now. So I went shopping…

Problem #2: Even if you were running XP or Vista before installing Win 7 RC, says Microsoft, you must buy a full license to Windows 7 Ultimate: you cannot install an Upgrade version. [Translation: we know you’re loyal customers, and you’re willing to pay more for the privilege of helping us weed out the bugs from our software.]

Be prepared to spend about $100 more than you’d shell out for  an upgrade license…

This is not a customer-friendly way to treat beta testers. Certainly not if you consider them among your most loyal customers.

Caveat: In theory, you could downgrade to XP or Vista and then install Windows 7 Upgrade <something>. Whether this will work on a Mac with Bootcamp is a mystery. I didn’t have that much time to waste, so I didn’t bother.

Problem #3: Most of the retail stores in this area stock only the Upgrade versions of the software.  So if you haven’t yet ordered your Windows replacement software, you may face a brief delay before receiving a copy to install. Or, you can buy a download license and wait for the software to be downloaded from Microsoft’s online store.

Problem #4: You get different stories from the retail clerks about which version of Windows to buy. Most appear to believe the Upgrade version will work, if you previously ran Vista or XP on your device. If you buy an Upgrade version and then discover only the full-licensed version will do, you’ve wasted a couple of hundred dollars.

Problem #5: The text on the Microsoft Store (online) is ambiguous, especially in the context of the sidebars and links. If you don’t study the text closely, you can get the impression that an Upgrade version will suffice. Like the brick-and-mortar stores, Microsoft’s online merchandising is heavily focused on the Upgrade versions. So I ordered my software from Amazon, to get a wee discount.

Fast forward to today. FedEx delivered my software from Amazon.

Today’s Catch-22’s

I restarted my computer in Windows 7 RC. I tried to run Windows Easy Transfer (to transfer files and settings to a USB memory stick). Windows shut down, so that process failed. (Fortunately, I’d backed up data files and documents to a network drive yesterday.)

Eventually I was able to insert the Windows 7 installation DVD in the drive.

Despite multiple tries (and special attention to ensure I was running the setup.exe file with administrator privileges), Windows 7 was unable to create an “installation folder” on my computer, so the installation program failed with an error message. (I’m guessing, but don’t know, that this is some sort of glitch between Bootcamp and Windows.)

I gave up on the Windows side, so I shut down and restarted in Mac OS X, and verified that I have the latest version of Bootcamp running under Snow Leopard.

My plan was to take semi-drastic action: to remove the Bootcamp partition, create a new Bootcamp partition, reformat it as NTFS, and then install Windows 7 in the newly formatted partition. (Following the usual Bootcamp process.)

Bootcamp was able to delete the Bootcamp partition (and convert my hard drive to a single Mac OS X drive); however, despite multiple attempts, it was unable to repartition the hard drive to create space for Windows. Apparently there are some (unidentified) files that cannot be moved. I verified the drive with Disk Utility, and it appears to be okay.

Apple’s Bootcamp documentation suggests that at this point the only recourse is to reformat the hard drive altogether, reinstall Mac OS X and all the programs and files; and then run the Bootcamp utility to repartition the drive – and resume the work to install Windows 7. If you have a Time Machine backup, as I do, you should be able to restore all your Mac files and programs from your most recent backup.

As for me, I’ve given up. This is way too much trouble to take for a computer that I expect? hope? to decommission in a few weeks — or whenever Apple eventually releases the next version of their MacBook Pro laptops.

I hope your experience is smoother than mine. Meanwhile I can no longer run Windows of any sort on this device.

I’m definitely not “a PC.” And Windows 7 was not “my idea.”

Just before the holidays I invested in Apple’s new server offering for small firms and workgroups, the Mac Mini Snow Leopard Server. It’s a sweet package.

For $999 you get a whisper-quiet, energy-efficient server not much larger than a paperback book. The device comes with 4GB of RAM and a terabyte of built-in storage, plus an unlimited client license to Apple’s powerful server software (10.6.x Snow Leopard).

Apple claims this combination of hardware and software can handle up to 25 concurrent users. To handle more users would require more powerful hardware. I’ve been using it to serve a handful of concurrent users, and it’s plenty fast.

The server software comes preinstalled. Sadly, I had to reinstall the OS with phone-based help from an AppleCare technician when the device refused to accept my serial number as valid. The 3-year extended warranty, which includes tech support, is a very good value.

The device takes up no space at all. As promised, you hear nothing when it’s running. It generates no heat, and has a negligible impact on the monthly electrical bill. In this regard it’s a wonderful set-up for small firms, especially creative firms where people need to hear themselves think, rather than be distracted by loud whirring fans.

Great for End-Users

From the end-user’s perspective the server’s main features — blogs, wikis, calendars, etc. — all function with Apple’s legendary simplicity. Compared to mainstream wikis I’ve used elsewhere, Apple’s approach is visually elegant, especially the feature that provides a “quick look” at documents that are attached to bullet points or sentences within the wiki. Apple appears to be “printing” your doc to PDF format while the doc is being uploaded to the server. This means that in addition to the file you can download from the wiki, you can zoom and preview key documents even if their native application does not run on the server or your end-user’s PC. Inserting hyperlinks and media files is also very easy.

Hire an Expert to Configure It

Be cautious. Don’t attempt to set up the device and configure it without the aid of an IT professional, unless you understand all the ins-and-outs of TCP/IP protocols, DNS, LDAP directories, root certificates, etc. Even if you get the impression from Apple’s marketing collateral that this is a “just add water” kind of product, don’t believe it. Server configuration is not easy.

We needed help to configure the port forwarding details on our business-class Comcast router, so our public fixed IP address would connect reliably to the server’s login page. Configuring the TCP/IP protocols on the Comcast router and the various networking and user directories on the server is not for the faint of heart. Even with the help of a networking veteran, we’ve had some glitches both inside and outside our firewall. Some of these glitches can be resolved by resetting the router periodically, but we still don’t understand what’s driving the problem.

I believe a technically savvy client who knows what she wants should expect to pay for at least a half-day of consultation from a network specialist who is also an Apple specialist. Someone who is primarily a Windows server expert will probably take even longer, although the details to be configured are generic and not specific to the Mac server OS.

If the small business owner is not technically savvy, even more time is likely to be required to configure the server properly — easily a day or more. This scenario will occur if the only way the business owner knows what she wants is by hands-on trial and discovery of what doesn’t work for her firm.

The issues I’m describing are independent of the server OS; you’d face the same thing with Linux or Windows servers, and would probably have to pay for even more hours to configure the networking properly.

My main point here is to manage expectations properly. Just because the device is small, cute and carries an Apple logo does not mean you should expect to set up and configure this server without an expert’s help.

But once you do, it’s very sweet. I love its wiki capabilities in particular, and look forward to sharing this form of collaboration with clients.

This must be a painful time to be a marketer at Dell Computer. Dell has just introduced a svelte, feature-packed premium laptop aimed at execs, status seekers and “impression makers.” Thanks to their PR team (or influencer relations), Dell secured a high visibility blog posting at the NY Times discussing the product and its aspirational positioning. Unfortunately, it backfired.

Customer Dissatisfaction Can Be Toxic

The blog post has already triggered over a hundred comments, largely negative – some virulently so. Here’s a sample comment, triggered by customer dissatisfaction:

All that matters to me is that after years of being a loyal Dell customer I have decided to NEVER purchase another computer from them again. Their customer service is now the most horrifying experience a consumer can ever fear to encounter.

And several others, in the same vein:

Buy Dell at your own peril.

I agree with the other Dell bashers, they make garbage hardware and their support is horrendous.

If I worked for Dell, this comment would make me cringe – and want to mandate that the people responsible for customer service take on the mission to overhaul the company’s reputation, based on actions and performance:

Dell has the worst customer service I have ever encountered in a company, and that is saying a lot. I used to be a loyal customer, having purchased dozens of computers, servers and laptops from them. Recently I had an experience so tortured and kafkaesque that I vowed never to give them my money again. I use Macs and PCs, and feel that the Mac hype is overblown (they don’t work all the time either). But compared to Dell, any other PC would be a joy.

Many of the comments say, paraphrased, “For that price, get a Mac.” The comments offer lots of reasons why. (Yes, the Mac cultists are out in force…)

All of the comments above were made in response to the NY Times blog post.

So What Happened? Why the Backlash?

The first reason for the negativity is a direct consequence of many years of Dell’s disappointing customers. People in the blog are writing from their own personal experience; anger and disappointment fuel their comments.

But the subtler reason is linked to brand strategy and the positions that Dell and Apple occupy in people’s minds.

Dell’s attempt to claim the premium, lust-worthy laptop positioning and thereby  challenge Apple’s MacBook Pro ran afoul of “brand permission” space. Customers are unwilling to grant permission to Dell to move into a radically different positioning, given what they know and believe about the Dell brand and the competitive environment.

Customers do not find Dell’s aspirational positioning credible, given Dell’s long-term (and very successful) stance as a utilitarian value leader. Their personal experience with the brand and the way the company relates to its customers reinforces the strength of their convictions.

Customers ridicule the idea that a Dell-branded product will appeal to status seekers, or impress people who think of themselves as “impression makers.” Here’s a comment that makes this point crystal clear – Dell is far from enjoying premium “badge” status:

This is the most impressive laptop you can buy… from Dell. I’d choose any brand but Dell to impress. Dell has positioned itself as the brand every brainless IT department buys every single one of their crummy locked-down computers from to run five year old software on, and I congratulate them on their success. However, I would never associate that brand with anything that is remotely impressive or individual. They’re the Denny’s of the computer world.

What compounds Dell’s situation is that customers so strongly believe Apple’s dominance of the most desirable, high-performance positioning that they take up arms to fend off challengers to Apple’s position. For example:

Macs are brilliantly designed, have the BEST OS as noted by virtually all credible experts, has the highest consumer satisfaction levels, by far, as well as the highest ratings for ease of use, reliability, customer service, etc., so why would you buy anything else?

How Has Dell Responded?

Social media influencers, take note. Dell is probably listening to these comments, but has no visible presence (at least not in the first two pages’ worth of comments) in this conversation. Given the negative tone of this debate, is that the optimal social media strategy?

Apple’s “welcome to your iPhone” email today reminded me that this company is a brilliant marketing engine, not just a ground-breaking advertiser or developer of cool products. They do the marketing basics really, really well.

By contrast our new relationship with Toyota, as Prius owners, reveals to us Toyota’s lack of attention to experience design when it comes to brand marketing. We like the car; I’m not sure how we feel about the brand — if we think of it at all.

Apple

As shown here, Apple’s welcome email provides links to tutorial demos and topical how-to instructions, introduces you to the App Store, and offers a free workshop in the nearest Apple Retail Store. This is a great example of post-sale marketing and experience design, aimed to increase your ability to get value out of the product, drive adoption of new features and expose hidden benefits. Their goal: nudging you on the path toward becoming an Apple brand evangelist. Marketing Basics 101, yes, but how many companies do this at all, let alone execute it so well?

Part of what makes Apple’s welcome email such a brilliant marketing tactic is its tone and editorial emphasis: the clear focus on making you as a new user more productive with your iPhone. It subtly reinforces your sense of having made a smart brand decision.

Apple conveys enthusiasm about helping you make the most of your new iPhone 3GS very effectively. The colors are bright and optimistic; there are multiple links to useful content for the new user.

Because it’s consistent with their brand, the emotional tone in this communication feels authentic.

Toyota

In contrast my husband’s recent direct mail from his Toyota dealer is traditional and prosaic. The design is uninspired; the copywriting quite pedestrian. The overall tone is very seller-centric. There’s nothing about it that feels personal, other than the name and address of the car buyer.

The editorial emphasis is on selling more stuff, rather than helping the new car owner get more value out of your recent purchase (or overcome potential buyer’s remorse). The mailer showcases additional things the dealer wants to sell. The front of the direct mail piece focuses on “special offers.” The back, which you may overlook while tossing the piece into the recycle bin, promises “Our commitment to you has just begun.”

Unlike the Apple welcome piece, you don’t feel that Toyota or the local dealer is thinking about any form of relationship other than the traditional seller-centric style of connection.

As a result I’m sure my husband doesn’t feel as good about his post-purchase brand touchpoint as I feel about mine from Apple – and the price disparity between a Prius and an iPhone is enormous. Fortunately for Toyota, my husband likes his first-ever Prius and is not suffering buyer’s remorse. If he were, this piece would not have helped in any way.

For Toyota this is a missed opportunity, especially because the car’s user interface (driver cockpit and transmission controls) is quite different from a traditional car. It takes time to learn how to get the most out of the Prius’ UI, so this would be a good moment to educate the customer on those differences and why they make sense.

Experience designers, take note. Toyota could use your help.

These days it’s cool for companies to want to emulate Apple. But it’s harder than it looks.

Case in point: This month’s Fast Company features Amazon’s Jeff Bezos pursuing his “inner Apple” as the cover story. Many articles and case studies have been written in an attempt to illuminate the secrets behind Apple’s continuing success. Pundits pontificate about Apple’s “secret sauce.” CEOs tell the troops to “get creative – innovate like Apple.”

So what’s behind this quest to imitate Apple? Mass media’s 25-year love affair with Apple? Apple’s stock performance? Its brand cachet? Ubiquitous  iPods, iPhones and white ear buds? C-level execs wanting global celebrity status like that of Steve Jobs or former Apple exec Guy Kawasaki? Today’s fad of PowerPoint bashing? The pursuit of cool?

I’m amazed at how often the “Apple wannabe phenomenon” crops up in the media, client engagements, cocktail conversations, and so on. I’m equally amazed at how unrealistic people are about what it takes to behave like Apple.

It’s Not Easy to Be Cool

From what I’ve seen, most business leaders’ desire to emulate Apple is wishful thinking. Their dreams cannot be realized because they are not supported by:

• a clear strategic intent linked to a disciplined, specific and actionable plan
• a favorable corporate culture
• a willingness to invest in change management to get from today’s pedestrian reality (whatever that might be) to Apple-like coolness
• holistic product planning that proceeds from the identified customers’ desired experience goals as a non-negotiable starting point
• or any real understanding of what’s required to embrace design as a strategic pillar of the essential corporate/brand strategy.

I call this the “CEO free lunch syndrome” – meaning they want it, but don’t have any intention of paying for it. Just like the mythical free lunch, execs who pursue this course are unlikely to make any real progress on their quest to emulate what’s best about Apple.

Embracing your “inner Apple.” It’s not just a question of hiring some brilliant interaction designers, award-winning agencies,  industrial designers or design strategists. Dressing in black turtlenecks and jeans; or dropping PowerPoint in favor of Apple Keynote and a slavish adherence to the principles of  “presentation zen.”

It’s Gotta Be Baked In – Part of Corporate DNA

My perspectives on Apple are based on a long history of working together in a variety of roles: employee, partner, customer,  service provider, and former shareholder.

So what does this perspective tell me?

It’s Hard to Imitate Apple

Apple’s competitive positioning and brand associations are based on tough-to-emulate qualities that take years to put into practice. Things like:

• employee indoctrination, on-boarding, corporate values – a corporate mantra – and cult-like objects to inspire devotion and reinforce commitment
• management-backed values  and recognition systems that support and reinforce behavior on the part of every employee to be consistent with corporate brand principles
• hiring and retention practices that attract and keep the right people on board (or within reach of Apple’s influence ecosystem)
• a culture that actively discourages mediocrity, celebrates heroic actions, and rewards risk taking without unduly punishing fast failures (as long as the mistakes lead to fast learning)

It’s Expensive to Imitate Apple

Even if you ignore Apple’s investment in highly designed and world-class ads, collateral, web presence – or “product as hero” photos that romance the brand (I’ve heard they spend upwards of $100K on the iconic photographs that will appear everywhere.) – Apple is committed to a highly disciplined approach that’s almost impossible to imitate. For example:

• an obsessive attention to detail, quality workmanship, and design principles focused on just the essentials (see story below)
• “tough love” criticism to prevent mediocrity, or good-enough-but-not-great ideas and products from creeping into the product or brand portfolio
• ruthless willingness to prune the product portfolio to just the right set of products and offers (no more SKU creep)
• willingness to delay product ship dates (or increase last-minute development costs) to ensure that new products adhere to design standards and Apple brand principles – no compromise
• a web presence and design philosophy that are so consistent you’d recognize them as coming from Apple even if the name and logos were removed
• willingness to vest decision making authority in a small number of design czars (or even a design dictator like Steve Jobs), rather than compromise the clarity of the design vision by trying to reach consensus across a broad constituency
• willingness and ability to develop design personas, supporting use cases and experience/interaction designs that will ensure customer delight – tactics that deliver on the strategy

Here are a few stories to illustrate my points.

Some Stories

The Cult of Apple – Internal evangelism

When I worked there, indoctrination into the cult of Apple began on Day One, with an all-day orientation that celebrated the myths and legends of the then-young company. (Even back then I wondered if I were getting brainwashed…) Throughout my 5 years as an employee, we were showered with tchotchkes, war stories, presentations, internal publications and artifacts that reinforced brand values and design principles.

Besides the official corporate values, there were “words to live by” and corporate mantras. Things like:

The journey is the reward.

And:

Apple will change the way people work, learn, live and play.

We reinforced these beliefs and values in everything we did, celebrated, talked about – or evangelized to partners and other stakeholders.

It’s the only employee badge I’ve never thrown away.

External Evangelism

Guy Kawasaki became famous after publishing the ideas he pioneered while leading Apple’s externally facing “Evangelism” team – a practice that Microsoft later borrowed? stole? “embraced and extended?” from Apple. Apple actively promulgated its beliefs and values, and required adherence from any partner whose offering would complete the value proposition to be delivered to the end-customer. (When I was there, this was a condition of participation in joint campaigns and promotions.)

More recently, I’ve heard stories from friends and family members who worked for AT&T during the launch and roll-out of Apple’s iPhone on the AT&T  network. To say there was culture clash between the two companies would be an understatement (based on the war stories I’ve heard via the local grapevine).

A major source of friction was Apple’s relentless insistence on owning the consumer’s online experience: people activating their first iPhone, or transferring their mobile number from another carrier. Apple didn’t want this step – a critical first impression — to be just another same-old/same-old AT&T activation experience. The problem for AT&T was that Apple’s desired online experience didn’t mesh nicely with the legacy back-end systems that got consumers up and running on AT&T’s subscriber network. Even so, despite enormous technical and scalability challenges, Apple prevailed.

The Design Czar

Most people have heard or read stories about Steve Jobs’ direct and hands-on involvement in customer-facing design decisions. But I’ve heard a story that’s really telling: his obsessive attention to design detail even for things that are “under the hood,” less likely to be visible to the casual observer or product reviewer.

I heard this story from a design principal for a Bay Area firm, who was in the room with Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ivey when this event occurred.

Apple was nearing design completion for one of its high-end Mac powerhouses – the expandable silver tower computers that are purchased by Hollywood studios, animators, design professionals, game developers, and Apple enthusiasts who aren’t budget constrained.

According to my source, Steve opened up the cover, looked at the board layouts and the design of the expansion chassis, and announced they weren’t good enough. He insisted that what was under the cover had to be just as beautiful (and functionally elegant) as what appeared on the outside of the product. Ease of use and design elegance – as applied to ease of maintenance by the Mac owner – had to match Apple’s vaunted UI standards for software usability. The design execs were sent back to their teams, and told to get it right. Apple delayed the product launch until the design principles and quality standards were achieved.

There’s a similar story about a last-minute design decision to replace the glass on the first iPhone to ensure it would be best-in-class, optical quality.

A related story – learning from design archetypes:

When I was working for Apple in the early days, one of Apple’s buildings on Mariani Drive proudly featured a black BMW motorcycle and a Bosendorfer piano in its main lobby. Why? They were held up as the design exemplars — illustrating the perfect balance between form and function. We all knew what they represented.

My Apple Credentials

Starting in 1983:

• partnering with Apple to develop and promote software solutions for Apple II, III, Lisa and Mac 128K (VisiCorp – 2⁺ years)
• playing a key role on the early Macintosh business marketing team in Cupertino (Apple employee – 5 years)
• partnering with Apple to further the franchise for creative/media professionals(Aldus/Adobe – 4 years)
• writing an early (co-branded) white paper on the Internet that Apple published and distributed around the world (1996, Informing Arts)
• being a loyal Apple customer since 1990 or so, and a Mac user since 1984.

I can’t claim to have current insights into Apple’s operating philosophies, but based on their observable behavior, I doubt they have materially changed.

My final point: if you want to emulate Apple, look below the surface and think carefully about whether you’re willing and able to commit to the required transformation. Let alone, fund it.