4 Decades of Apple Marketing - OUGD401

To gain a greater knowledge of Apples history in the advertising game. I am going to take a look at past examples to give myself a good idea of where they are today, and how they got there in the first place, from focusing on the 'people' and not the business orientated industry which was lead by IBM in the late 70's/80's, and how this has effectively stayed the same to this day. In other words, doing what they do best within the branding, promotion and advertising of their products.


1970's

At the beginning, Apple were competing with the likes of giants like IBM, and the print ads above are representative of the design trends of the time, relying heavily on type and images that often 'set the scene'. This was considered to engage the consumer in such a manor that would apply to themselves, an 'average joe' being able to buy one of these computers and become more competent and organised in life. At the time this had a huge impact on consumer culture as it had never been done before, so it seemed quite foreign to any population. Making the ads seem as 'at home' as possible to reduce intimidation and increase the notion of ease of use.

1980's

The 80's was a rather skewed period for Apple. Steve Jobs was voted out of his own company and the impact on the company was huge, you can also see the impact from the print advertisements. Starting to focus more and more on the 'business' side of the company rather than the average consumer made Apple scream to other companies that became increasingly appealing through ease-of-use, the branding and promotion of said products is evidently a large part of reaching the consumerist target audience. They made it too complicated and hardware orientated which makes for a not-so consumer friendly product.


1990's

They realised were they went wrong, why the consumer wasn't responding in the way that they had originally hoped. So they began to focus more on software in the early 90's to compete with the likes of Microsoft Windows which was a much more familiar and user friendly operating system that consumers preferred because it was cheap and could be applied to any hardware they owned. Apple were busy creating industry standard applications you can use at home, which is still being done today, but in a much more successful and obvious way. As interest was still declining for Apple products, the consumer was responding in quite a negative way to the over complication of not just the branding, but the way they advertised the products to the consumers.


Time for the re-introduction of Steve Jobs, and it's quite evident just by looking at their marketing strategies and products which is where industrial designer Jonny Ive had a huge influence on the design of the products, this meant no beige colour, and incorporated curves and differentiated the products from the rest. This alone was enough to engage the consumer by focusing not just on the specifics, but the product itself and what it represents. The print ads from 1997 onwards represent this statement perfectly:

2000's

Apple's growth in the 2000's was huge, and is continuing to grow today with the largest acquisition of the mobile market for the last few years, overtaking the likes of android. The reasons of which can be reflected in the branding and advertising strategies used. As of today, the print ads shown below give an idea of how simple they are becoming, it's almost the ultimate form of minimalism, opening the imagination of the consumers, as technology is coming to a tipping point of not being so intimidating to the consumer anymore.

Present Day

The minimisation of such technical hardware lets the consumer focus on the usability of such products rather than Apple telling them what they can do with them, the consumer can decide for themselves. Which in my opinion is the most effective way of advertising a product, as this would have seemed intimidating a couple of decades ago, today it has been well received as sales will represent.