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Despite a tanking economy, Apple has record sales and profits and doesn’t need a fire sale to compete this holiday season.  Find out four things they have mastered which make this possible.

Apple is coming off the best performing fiscal year ever according to cNet, with $1.67 billion in profit – which is a whopping $1.82 per share of earnings.  This along with record sales for the Mac and iPhone, I wonder how Apple does it.

When other companies struggle to weather the economic storm, how is it that Apple is able to sell a record number of some of the most expensive phones and computers on the market?  Why is it that people are willing to put up with AT&T just to have the glorious iPhone?

Image of the new iMac from apple.com

Dell just came out with their earnings a few weeks ago and missed even the most modest analysts expectations with only $727 million in profit, or $0.27 per share.  Not even close to Apple, and the new Netbooks with Windows 7 is apparently pretty hot, right?

Part of the answer is how they package it. When you buy any Apple product, the packaging is very high end – you feel like you have purchased something very special.  When I first opened my new MacBook Pro box, I felt like I was opening a gift from Nordstrom’s. Open an HP box and it’s nothing special.  You actually get instructions that look like they were meant for a 5-year old, or those wordless graphics like you see in the backseat of an airplane.  Yep – I think I can figure out how to put the battery in – thanks.

Part of the answer is how they market the products. If you visit www.apple.com from a PC, you see a page really hyping the new iMac.  If you visit the page from a Mac, then you get a page pushing new accessories.  This is smart marketing.  Visit www.dell.com and to find a monitor, you first have to decide if it’s for Home or Office – as if it matters – do they price them differently?  The Apple home page is simple, easy to navigate and puts a big focus on the “hero”, which are the products.  Their checkout process is refined and brilliantly cross-sells other accessories leaving you no choice but to fill your cart with about $300 of more stuff that you absolutely have to have.  After all, that’s great marketing, right?

Part of the answer is their trusted brand. Apple has spent years building a brand.  A brand that you can trust is reliable and where the products will last.  The only company that decided it was better to manufacture the hardware and the software all in the same place.  That means installing new software or applications will only require you to click and drag an icon, rather than having to scour the Internet for a driver.

Part of the answer is innovation. The innovative products that Apple keeps pumping out are a huge factor in their success.  If your company doesn’t change, or innovate, you likely will not experience explosive growth, revenue or profits.

So if you have all of these things and you’ve been able to create insatiable demand, you really don’t need to have sales on days like “black Friday.”  Not only would a sale “cheapen” the brand, but it creates an expectation in the mind of the consumer that all you have to do is wait and eventually the price will go down.  This is what the cable companies do at the end of every month, and car companies do at the end of every year.  Surely you’ve heard the best time to buy a car is at the “end of the year clearance sales” – right?  Apples doesn’t need sales, and unless the competition brings, well….competition, they probably won’t even have to lower their prices much either.

10 Comments »Tags: apple, marketing, marketing strategy

While working outside in the garden yesterday, I was watching a baby bird learning to fly while its mother chirped and moved from tree to tree trying to get the little one to follow. Occasionally the daddy bird would also join in. It was nice to hear the little tweets as they all talked to each other. It gave me something else to think about as I was pulling weeds.  There are days though, when all the crows are chirping incessantly and all I want is some peace and quiet. I’m not interested in what they’re doing, I don’t care what all the fuss is about. I just want to switch off. Their chirping is irritating as I try to sleep or work.
The same thing applies to Twitter. There are days when I like hearing that little chirp. Other days, I just want to turn it off. Some people just tweet too much. Unless you’re CNN, you can’t possibly have that much to say that you’re tweeting every 10 minutes. Asking around the office, I’m not the only one that will un-follow someone for tweeting too much. If you’re following several hundred people there can just be a brain overload. That gentle chirping can turn into feeding time at the parakeet show and a lot of those tweets are like the result of all that food…
Whilst Twitter can be a good marketing tool, it’s important to limit what you say. If you babble to much, people will turn you off and then your message is going no-where.

No Comments »Tags: marketing, twitter

You’ve probably seen one of these recent Bud Light commercials from their new “Drinkability” campaign. I’m still wondering what the hell “drinkability” even is….sounds like another made-up ad agency phrase, like “brand immersion” or “holistic ideation”.

So while the ad agency is worried about coining phrases like “drinkability”, we’re off worrying about “measurability”. The agency will argue that these types of phrases “resonate through to the consumer” and that it creates “brand recognition” – all true points. But how do you measure the impact of this campaign, and was it the messaging that drove more sales, or the fact that you bought more reach and frequency in your media buy? There is a direct correlation between buying X more dollars of media will result in Y more dollars of sales, but at some point, it levels out and you end up spending more to get nothing. Do you know where this point is?

What if you turned off the advertising for a while? What was the impact?

We had a discussion today about the disparity between brand promise and consumer experience. How does Bud Light measure that? Ideally, you would like for everything you say in your marketing and advertising to live up to your customer’s every expectation. What happens if it doesn’t? How is social media going to affect my brand if I can’t deliver on my “drinkability” promise?

Well, I’m sure that Bud Light and their agency have it all figured out. In fact, I’m going to pick up some Bud Light right now!

2 Comments »Tags: brand promise, marketing, measuring broadcast