Gone are the days of Apple’s when dominant marketing savvy CEO in Steve Jobs who, alongside visionary designer Johnny Ive, could articulate a clear positioning via forward thinking human centred design. Current CEO Tim Cook’s Apple brand strategy appears MIA, uncentered and confused: what is it that Apple stands for these days — fun? humanity? simplicity? or as a friend described it, “reassuringly expensive”.
While Apple might be one of the world’s most valuable brands but this has been largely created on the back of a single product — the iPhone and by switching from product centredness to service led — Apple TV and Apple Music. Its reliance on what appears to be a legacy strategy has seen its brand positioning, particularly around design, largely abrogated to competitors like Google, Huawei and Samsung.
Just this week Apple released macOS Catalina, the new version of its standalone Mac operating system, which saw it dumping its nearly 20 year old iTunes sub-brand in favour of three branded apps: Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV. This at least makes some sense but there’s no longer any distinction between it’s app naming, its subscription service, its non-subscription music integration as well as its peripherals eg. Apple TV is both a service and device. And then there’s its Apple Match service.
Are we to assume that they are always going to be one and the same or will products and service delivery be a mash? Someone needs to get in there and give them decent nomenclature guidance.
And given all this, Apple no longer appears to have a head of brand. They haven’t had one since 2017 and perhaps that explains it.
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