Posts in Branding, Business, Marketing, Tech

  • Learned

Apple’s Better, Special, Different

Watching the Apple keynote this week – and reading this – all highlighted the importance of starting with the product to drive differentiation. Everything Apple does is about difference – not just to others in the market but to what preceded it.

Prices then go up over time and are a result of innovation.

As Tim Cook said in his interview with BusinessWeek:

“We never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone,” says Cook. “Our primary objective is to sell a great phone and provide a great experience, and we figured out a way to do it at a lower cost.”

And critically, the product and pricing are optimised for a specific market – where the Apple ecosystem is most vital – America. As Ben demonstrates well:

The Apple ecosystem is of most value in the American markets first, the European markets next, and the Asian-style markets last … therefore, it’s very rational for Apple to optimise its pricing for the American-style markets, and the most logical price is $550/$99.

What Ben is getting at in all of this is a set of marketing fundamentals I see most marketers, miss:

  1. Price to product differentiation – not just relative to market but also prior product instantiations. Don’t price solely to category entry point or pricing dynamics.
  2. Pricing must exist in the context of broader market dynamics in most cases, but not all. There is little logic to the iPhone Pro pricing relative to other competing products. It is priced on its merits as a “luxury” device. Pro is always the misnomer in tech – it’s code for luxury.
  3. Pricing substitution isn’t necessary – each Apple product is priced relative to the market and its brand effect. iPhones don’t sell for less than they are worth in the hope you will buy iPods and other services. There is no “hope” in Apple’s strategy.

Start with: product (innovation & differentiation), position, price. Not with price, the product, then position.

Effectively Apple’s brand power is the point of leverage and “strategy” insurance. The massive investment in the Apple brand creates the halo that protects pricing power and ensures demand. But without effective product innovation, priced and packaged to the core target market, the brand wouldn’t make the difference up.

Stratechery is a great read and well worth paying for.

  • Connect

Marketing Spending Ups and Downs

Interesting chatting to CMOs on the shifts in marketing spending during the apocalypse. The majority I’ve chatted to reflect The CMO Survey at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business which found that 30% of marketers surveyed have not experienced changes to their marketing budgets while 41.3% even reported gains and just 28.4% reported losses. On average, marketers reported a 5% increase in budgets during the pandemic and expect digital spending to grow by 4% in the next year. The top two goals? Building brand value and retaining current customers. Social media continues to be a key part of marketers’ planning. In fact, the report found that 84.2% have used social media for brand-building and 54.3% have used it for customer retention.

The nutty bit of those last two sentences IMHO is the expected impact of social on brand. I get it for customer retention but brand building, nope.

  • Learned

The 10 biggest brands on Facebook

Just look at this list. Personal brands – or people as brands – beat businesses as brands in terms of Facebook. The question here is what makes them “biggest”.

I’m not sure followers or likes are the best of metrics. Sure, they are metrics but should we be really looking at engagement at a deeper level – or revenue? Does their success on Facebook afford them more margin or customer loyalty? I like Joe Tripodi’s ideas for measuring Expressions.

So, in addition to “consumer impressions,” we are increasingly tracking “consumer expressions.” To us, an expression is any level of engagement with our brand content by a consumer or constituent. It could be a comment, a “like,” uploading a photo or video or passing content onto their networks.

It is stunning to me that 33,764,986 like Coke on Facebook… (including me). We’re on our way with some 55,370 people liking CBA.

For more, read… The 10 biggest brands on Facebook- what’s hot and what’s not – TNW Facebook.

  • Inspired

Site of The Week

The Brander… great collection of brand stories and curation of ideas. Like this story on Mother Denim and this one on Le Pain Quotidien.