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Apple Marketing

Is Apple losing its crisp?

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By Jonathan Chajet, partner

December 8, 2016 | 5 min read

Prophet recently released its annual ranking of the world’s most relevant brands, and Apple topped the list for the second year in a row. The study surveys 15,000 U.S. consumers about more than 300 brands across 27 industries to determine which brands are the most relevant in consumers’ lives.

Credit: Apple

CEO of Apple Tim Cook

Congratulations to Apple, sort of. Although it stayed atop the ranking, Apple’s overall relevance score went down a few points from last year, and its performance on a few of the 16 key metrics should be concerning. It dropped nearly 25% for the attribute “makes me feel inspired”, 14% in “connects with me emotionally”, and 5% in “a brand I trust.” The net effect: consumers are seeing Apple as less distinctive and less inspiring .

Year-to-year fluctuations are normal, but something tells me these are more than margin-of-error anomalies. For the past few years, the Apple brand has felt a bit lost. This is just the first data I’ve seen that confirms my suspicions.

Over the summer, I ran across this iPad Pro ad. When it was first introduced, the iPad was such a revolutionary product, finding a niche between the phone and the laptop. But this felt like a step backwards, purposely trying to blur the line between tablet and laptop. This is especially dangerous for Apple given the lack of innovation in its own line of laptops; these would be the first consumers to convert. I understand that Apple wants a bigger piece of the business user market, but it felt strategically conflicted.

More recent evidence is the launch of the iPhone 7. Fear the phantom menace of Silicon Valley. Bathed in stark black, the ad has no voiceover or copy. This is a great strategy for a smartphone, if it was 1997 and gadget envy were still a thing.

Personally, I adored the iPhone 6 campaign – striking photography and a simple assertion: Shot on iPhone 6. It is a brilliant dramatization of a product’s core purchase trigger, the advanced built-in camera. In contrast, the iPhone 7 ads seem dark, dated and self-important.

But it would be wrong to conclude the brand lacks new and interesting things to say. When Apple brings you its whole ecosystem in one story, the effect is magical. This 2014 Christmas ad absolutely nails it. This 2016 Apple Music ad does not.

If you think this is just a critique of ad campaigns, let me help you think different. iTunes is desperately in need of an update. Apple Music is an also ran, and largely a cannibalization of itself. Apple TV is terribly boring. It’s almost impossible to get a next-day service appointment at an Apple Store if you have a 9-5 job. And how many times can my iPhone 6 screen crack before I start thinking it’s not me? Taken together, this should be worrying.

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, once said: “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” A bad ad campaign is eminently forgivable. But poor judgment is not. Rushing to market with a marginally improved product just to meet Wall Street expectations is incredibly short-sighted. Just ask Samsung’s shareholders.

Yet Samsung’s recent woes are more than a cautionary tale. There is a vacuum in the phone market right now, as Galaxy consumers are feeling a bit…burned. And since people are pre-disposed to brands they know and trust, Google Pixel and iPhone 7 could not be hitting the market at a better time. Yes, Apple will get its share of Samsung defectors, perhaps enough to overcome a weak iPhone 7. But it will not get the unfair share that great brands deserve.

The Apple brand needs to get back to its roots and remind itself of its reason for being. Get product innovation and customer experience back on track. And it needs to act now, before the chance to engage loyal consumers slips away. It can happen much faster than you think. Just ask Sony, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, HP, Blackberry and HTC. None of these consumer technology brands failed overnight. But failed they did.

I am reminded of a piece of wisdom straight out of a Mad Men script: “I didn’t fire him because he lost the account. I fired him because he didn’t know he was going to lose the account.” I fear Apple does not know its losing the account.

Jonathan Chajet is a partner in Prophet’s San Francisco office

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