Steve Jobs, Apple and the Brand

Steve Jobs surrounded himself with brilliantly creative talent.

Steve Jobs was a personal hero and constant inspiration for me, but I will let others more eloquent than I eulogize the great man.

The occasion of his passing caused me to reflect not only on the man’s genius, but how well he surrounded himself with brilliant and creative talent to achieve his ultimate goal—he really did create amazing technology that would change the world.

Among this talent is the creative team—a team that captured the brand’s essence and Jobs’s vision with perfect pitch and to maximum effect. Aside from the genre-defining and category-killing technology, which changed the way we listen to music, think about phones, and reconsider personal “computing,” we fell in love with the Apple brand.

While some can (and many do) claim that their technology rivals that of Apple, few can claim greater loyalty or superior appeal to the brand experience of Apple and its suite of products. (When is the last time people waited in line for hours to purchase a personal device that wasn’t an Apple product?)

It is a challenging, though exhilarating, exercise to truly capture and convey a brand’s core essence, so when I as a branding nerd see it done with unsurpassed aplomb, I simply marvel. Even if I hated the products, I couldn’t help but love the brand.

Apple’s success, and that of their creative branding partners, should be aspirational to us all—even those in seemingly mundane industries. At the core of every business, and every individual, there is a personality. It’s why that company exists, not what that company sells. Apple’s was world changing. And yours can be game changing.

So not only did Apple have a really cool company; he challenged and empowered creative minds to capture the cool, and convert the world.

Well done, Mr. Jobs.

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And here is a sampling of some of my favorite Apple brand experiences. Notice how the experience focuses on why you want this product, NOT how the product actually works.