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Apple's advertising is soft-sell to the extreme. Wouldn't sales go better with a more direct approach?
Selling Air: The Nebulous Advertising of Apple Computer
by Del Miller
September 25, 2003
Of all the complaints that Macintosh fans direct at Cupertino, perhaps the most common one concerns Apple's peculiar approach to advertising. For most of it's history, Apple has devoted it's marketing resources toward the most indirect forms of persuasion. Seldom do Macintosh ads promote the hardcore advantages of owning an Mac, but rather drape their products in veiled images of John Lennon or more recently, in short, content free, vignettes of smiling Switchers.
If a PC using friend expressed some interest in buying a Macintosh and asked you for your considered advice, I sincerely doubt you would reply by smiling serenely and pointing to a grainy, black and white photo of Mahatma Gandhi. I can only imagine the puzzled expression on his face as he tried valiantly to make the connection between the two. If you instead told him that your PC once ate your homework he might have a fighting chance at recognizing your point, but I doubt that it would send him scurrying down to the local Apple Store with credit card in hand.
The Big Question
In my experience, influencing skeptical consumers to buy a Macintosh has always required more than hand waving and lofty references to thinly related imagery. So why does Apple choose the most nebulous of advertising approaches to sell Macintoshes?
In this story, I'd like to explain to you the science behind Apple's advertising decisions. Unfortunately I can't do that because I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes at Apple Marketing. But I can suggest a few things that might help explain why they do the things they do.
Advertising for Dummies - No Such Thing
Textbooks on advertising tend to break the process of mass persuasion down into a neat, bite-sized chunks of perfectly reasonable wisdom. But I've been personally involved in many high tech marketing programs and I can tell you that the leap from clear-cut advertising theory to down-and-dirty commercial practice is less like an actual leap and more like a tumbling fall down a rocky hillside.
Corporate advertising is a fiendishly complex undertaking, undermined by internal issues that the intended market would never understand and complicated by a customer base composed of individual humans, each with unique interests and needs. There is neither a single best message nor a single best way of reaching every single person out there, so the final result is a compromise that can never please everyone.
What does an advertisement mean?
I suspect that if you confronted the advertising managers at Apple with the complaint that, "Those ads aren't persuasive!" I suspect that the response would be, "So?"
Hard as this might be to accept, advertising for relatively costly or complicated products (like computers) are seldom meant to persuade the customer to actually buy the product. Your average computer purchaser is unlikely to even listen to your pitch unless he plans to buy a computer in the very near future, and all the facts and figures you might send their way will be either ignored or forgotten by the time he's ready to make a purchase. Since most people only buy a computer every two, three or even four years, a hard sell is basically a waste of advertising dollars.
Advertising for computers is primarily meant for one purpose only; to lodge a single message in the viewer's mind - "When you're ready to buy, look us up." The facts and figures aren't nearly as important as simply getting the prospective buyer to remember that Apple sells computers.
The Switch campaign is a vehicle to tell the computer buying public that there are some people out there who bought a Macintosh and are happy that they did. The reasons for their happiness are far less important than the simple recognition that switching is a wonderful experience.
Testify
So, assuming that the simple allure of happiness is sufficient to plant the Macintosh meme in the minds of the viewers, the next question is: "Is the Switcher format the best way of doing so?"
Studies show that when you have a complicated message to send to your market, not much beats a good testimonial. The Switcher ads are essentially testimonials, cutting through the facts and figures and complex messages with a human voice conveying a very clear message, "I'm happy I switched, and you will be too."
The testimonial approach is a very good one for a product like the Macintosh, but the key to a good testimonial is the credibility of the testifier. There are all kinds of theories on what makes a good candidate for a product spokesman: a noted expert, a celebrity, the man on the street, or even some manufactured pseudo-being like the Dell Dude or the nameless drone that Microsoft employed in their faked version of the Switcher ad.
If there is a scientific means of figuring out what sort of spokesman is best for your product I'm not aware of it. Sometimes the most unlikely individuals are screaming successes and sometimes a perfectly viable individual fails miserably. Lindsay Wagner, of Bionic Woman fame, was the most successful spokesman that Ford Motor company ever had. Why? I haven't a clue. I would give you an example of outright failures but frankly, I don't remember them - which illustrates my point.
Total Recall
So, testimonials can't be useful unless they indelibly link the product to the messenger. I would never have picked Ellen Feiss as a spokesman for the Macintosh, but she became one of the most recognizable faces of the Macintosh ever, far more effective than the famous face of Jeff Goldblum ever did. Who knew?
The beauty of the Switch ads is that the common theme of the ordinary person telling their story in front of the white background created, through sheer repetition, the link between the messenger and the product. You could watch these commercials with the sound turned off and you would still know that the unknown person on the television was describing how happy you would be with a Macintosh.
At least from a theoretical standpoint, the Switch campaign was brilliant. The people in front of that white background were given instant celebrity status without the high costs of hollywood stars. The less money you spend on the commercial the more commercials you can afford to air.
But did the Switch ads work?
Some have deemed the Switch campaign a failure because the standard marketshare numbers for Apple didn't budge. Admittedly, sales are the ultimate measure of an advertising program but one has to be careful how the measurement is made.
Keep in mind that the Switch ads were aimed solely at the consumer space and, according to some numbers I've seen Apple's consumer marketshare actually doubled since the campaign began. Leaving aside how consumer sales are broken out from other market segments, that would indicate a remarkably successful program.
In addition, the image of Apple Computer has picked up several orders of magnitude in the "Cool" department, including awards for same. I doubt that there is a line item in Apple's annual statement for Cool, but it is a terrific indicator of future sales.
And that's where mass market advertising, as a process, is misunderstood. For products like a personal computer, the purpose of advertising is simply to make the potential customers aware of the product - to embed a favorable image in the their minds so that when it's buying time, they think of that product. Television and billboard advertising is very much a long term investment, with the rewards occurring months or even years after the ad campaign is over. The ultimate effectiveness of the Switch campaign is yet to be determined.
Incompleteness theorem
As I read the critiques of Apple's marketing approach, I get a feeling of arrows landing all around the bullseye but not quite in the center. The uneasiness that Mac fans have about the Switch ads might have less to do with format and far more to do with how that format might be better utilized.
The Joe Everyman persona of the Switch ad personalities is not a bad thing, but it seems a shame that more credible spokesman couldn't be added to the mix. Considering how many consumers buy PCs on the advice of the IT specialists at work or through consultations with friends who are recognized, if only in small circles, as computer experts, you would think that the Switch ads might also include more Switchers of the professional type. A few more IT director types and professionals that actually, wear a tie (gasp) just might sway those people who aren't heavily influenced in their computer purchases by valley-talking high school girls with sleepy eyes.
And the celebrity angle shouldn't have been neglected. For a company that once sponsored the Applemasters program, featuring John Cleese, Herbie Hancock, Muhammad Ali, Sinbad and Jennifer Jason Leigh as stars who were themselves fans of the Macintosh, you'd think they might have figured out a way to have a few of these big names stand up in front of that white background. Or why not use the best computer pitchman the world has ever known: Steve Jobs himself? Tony Hawk is a start a guess, but still...
Selling Computers
Other criticisms of Apple's advertising campaign, though leveled at the high profile Switch ads, are really more appropriately directed at other parts of Apple's marketing campaign that seem to be missing.
To my way of thinking, Apple does a fine job of attracting attention and gaining mindshare. Good grief, how else can a relatively small player in the personal computer market have such an outsized share of the trade news headlines? What Apple doesn't do so well is capitalize on this attention when the customer is finally ready to buy. In other words, where is the hard sell when you need it?
Now that Apple Stores are spread out in fashionable shopping centers across the land, you'd think that Apple would be advertising the heck out of them. Local television ads and newspaper supplements would, it seems, be a great place let people know that there's a great new computer store in town.
Look at the new Apple billboards scattered throughout major metropolitan areas: Flashy graphics and, in small print a reference to the website. What about the Apple Store that might be fifteen minutes away - no mention.
The direct approach
Now you should take my criticism, like everyone else's, with a huge grain of salt. Pretending that I know better than Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller and the other pros at Apple and Chiat-Day is a bit of conceit that even I'm not up to.
But the collective wisdom of the Macintosh community ought not to be discounted and there is a widespread belief that Apple could do better in the advertising department than it has. The mail I get on the matter expresses a sense of puzzlement that something isn't done about it. I can understand the feeling, it's not like Apple has ever been accused of paying too much attention to advice from it's customers.
Despite defending Apple's ads, I can't honestly say that I'm a big fan of Apple's advertising philosophy. Depicting a Mac user shot, cannonball style, through the wall of his house by the sheer computing power of his new Macintosh just doesn't move me as a consumer, and I have a hard time imagining that it moves very many others either. It grabs the attention, but where's the persuasion? The number one rule for every salesman is, "You have to ask for the sale."
I'd sure like to see Apple spend a bit more time appealing directly those parts of our brain that we engage when actually making the buying decision. An in-your-face pitch telling the public that Macs are simply a better value - better made, easier to use and more productive - seems like not to much to ask. Why not at least try it?
Copyright 2003, Del Miller. All rights reserved.
Thoughts on how to sell Macintoshes? Drop me a line here.
Del also writes the "Difference Engine" column at www.macopinion.com
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