Waarom deze Steve Jobs in shorts en sandalen uit 1997 nog steeds relevant is

Hij ziet er uit als een messias-figuur en wie luistert naar wat Steve Jobs in 1997 vertelt, ziet moeiteloos waarom z’n woorden twintig jaar later nog steeds relevant zijn.

Steve Jobs introduceert in deze video de ‘Think Different’ campagne. De manifesto-gedreven video wordt echter vooraf gegaan door een duidelijke situatieschets. Hij schetst de context. Die context is ook twintig jaar later nog steeds relevant.

Steve Jobs & context van Think Different

“To me marketing is about values.
It’s a very complicated world,
It’s a very noisy world,
And we are not going to get a chance
to get people to remember much about us
No company is.
And so we have to be really clear
On what we want them to know about us
Now Apple, fortunately, is one of the half-a-dozen best brands in the world
Right up there with Nike, Disney, Coke, Sony…
It’s one of the greats of the greats
Not just in this country, but all around the globe
But even a great brand needs investment and caring if it’s going to retain it’s relevance and vitality
And the Apple brand has clearly suffered from neglect in this area in the last few years
And we need to bring it back.
And the way to do that is not to talk about speeds and fees
It’s not to talk about bits and mega-hertz
It’s not to talk about why we are better than windows
The Dairy industry tried for 20 years to convince you that milk was good for you.
It’s a lie, but they tried anyway.
And the sales were falling
And then they tried ‘Got Milk’ and the sales went up.
Got Milk wasn’t even talking about the product. In fact, it focusses on the absence of the product.
But the best example of them all
And one of the greatest jobs of marketing that the universe has ever seen, is Nike.
Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes.
And yet, when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company.
In their ads, as you know, they don’t ever talk about the product.
They don’t ever tell you about their air soles and why they are better than Reebok’s air soles.
What does Nike do in their advertising.
They honor great athletes and they honor great athletics.
That’s who they are.
That what they are about.
Apple spends a fortune on advertising
You’d never know it.
So, when I got here, Apple just fired their agency and there was a competition with 23 agencies that you know, four years from now we would pick one.
We blew that up and we hired chiat/day, the ad agency that I was fortunate enough to work with years ago and who created some award winning work including the commercial voted the best ad ever made (1984).
And we started working about 8 weeks ago and the question we asked was: our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for. Where do we fit in this world.

What we’re about isn”t making boxes, for people to get their job done.

Although we do that well.
We do that better than almost anybody, in some cases.
But Apple is about something more than that.
Apple at the core… It’s core value, is that…

We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.

Thats what we believe.
And we have the opportunity to work with people like that, with software developers, with customers, who have done it. In some big, and some small ways.
And we believe that, in this world, people can change it for the better.
And that those people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones that actually do.
And so, what we’re going to do in our first brand marketing campaign in several years is to get back to that core value.

A lot of things have changed.

The market is in a total different place than where it was a decade ago
And Apple is totally different
And Apple’s place in it is totally different
And believe me, the products, and the distribution strategy and the manufacturing are totally different and we understand that.

But values and core values
Those things shouldn’t change.

The things that Apple believed in at it’s core
Are the same things Apple really stands for today
And so we wanted to find a way to communicate this.
And what we have is something that I’m very moved by.
It honors those people who have changed the world.
Some of them are living, some of them are not.
But the ones that aren’t, as you’ll see, you’ll know
That if they ever used a computer, it would have been a Mac.
The theme of the campaign is ‘Think Different’.
It’s honoring the people who think different and move this world forward
And it is what we are about.
It touches the soul of this company.
So I am gonna go ahead and roll it,
And I hope that you feel the same way about it as I do.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Fast Forward naar 2009.

Tijdens zijn TedTalk tekent Simon Sinek 3 cirkels op een white board en legt hij uit dat hij allicht een van de meest eenvoudige concepten ooit heeft bedacht.