This past week I finally got to watch the movie Jobs, coincidentally on the same day that Apple announced the next series of iPhones; iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S.
Like many other entrepreneurs and marketers in the world, Steve Jobs is a true inspiration to me. Watching the movie didn’t just give me goose bumps but also made me feel more and more confident about what I’m doing and how the road to success can have its ups and downs, and in Jobs case, many.
But it also made me think about the same question many have been asking ever since Steve Jobs passed; would Apple survive after him and more importantly, how are they going to do it?
From a branding point of view, in my opinion, they are making the same mistake they did the first time Jobs left the company. They are forgetting what their brand values are or perhaps they are creating new ones? All I know is that the Apple we all have come to know as this cool company that produces innovative products that have shaped the way we use technology for the past decade is in fact, at the edge of what many professionals have perceived to be the slow and agonizing decline of a former industry leader and futuristic trend setter.
A quote from the movie that stuck to my mind was when Jobs came back to the company and said “lets make Apple cool again” because it is embedded as one of the brand’s core values. The second most important of Apple’s brand values is that its products are made for the future, that you don’t even know you need them because you simply don’t even know they could exist; products for the future.
Easy to see that they are making an effort to hold onto this with the addition of the iPhone 5C And 5S, but one can only hope that the new technology is well received by consumers and that the opportunity to maintain their position as an industry expert atop the technological mountain doesn’t slip through their fingertips. And then there’s the technology, as the third brand value. The fact that the company is an expert in producing not only high tech products but also in creating high tech user-friendly products that everybody can use.
In my opinion, the high costs of Apple products have always been consistent with their brand values, attempting to gain market share through offering cheaper priced products, well not quite. My biggest concern is that Apple is losing its own brand values. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still one of the biggest Apple fans, kissing my iPhone before I go to sleep every night and insisting on reading e-books on my iPad even though I really miss getting food stains on my paper books. Just to stay loyal. But then again, I was really loyal to Blackberry at some point of my life too, and we all know how that story ends.
All I can hope for is for Apple to make small things unforgettable again.
DreamOn 