How Apple Does Its Marketing

Written and Designed by: Loo Hao Zhe (23-U2)

It does not take a genius to know that Apple is a rich company: When individuals hear “Apple”, their first thoughts immediately go to the multi-billion dollar company that produces all the tech products we know and love. However, the company has also received criticism for marking-up the prices of their products., . Despite this, many individuals still flock to Apple Stores, and some even  willingly queue outside stores overnight just to get first dibs on the latest Apple products. The crux of the situation eventually boils down to one practice: Marketing. Apple’s  success  today is largely attributed to their legendary marketing practices. A proof of this would be how Apple was voted the overall winner of the 2017 CMO Survey Award for Marketing Excellence for the 10th consecutive year. So, what kind of marketing techniques is Apple using to secure itself as one of the world’s most profitable companies? It can be simply summed up in 2 major ways.

Simplicity is Key The idea of simplicity is carried out throughout the entire marketing process of Apple’s products. They do not overwhelm their targeted customers with too many choices. We can see this trend in the launch of iPhones every single year, where Apple generally only holds one September launch event, compared to their competitors  who launch 3 to 4 major events per year. At that single launch event, Apple only releases 3 to 4 phones, which are named very simply as well. An example of this would be last year's iPhone 14 line-up, where the 4 phones are simply named: 14, 14 Plus, 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. 

Source: Apple

This allows potential customers to navigate their phone lineup with greater ease, as the generation of phones are named in  chronological order (12, 13, 14) to allow one to intuitively know that an iPhone 14 is newer and better than an iPhone 13 and which is in turn better than an iPhone 12, so on and so forth. Furthermore, in the iPhone 14 series, customers know what the phone is capable of just by their names; ‘Plus’ meaning a larger sized phone, ‘Pro’ meaning a more capable phone, and ‘Pro Max’ meaning that you are getting the most out of everything Apple has to offer. Keeping their product names simple also ensures that their potential customers retain memory of these products longer. Remembering “iPhone 14” (Apple) is much simpler than remembering “Galaxy S23” (Samsung) or “Xperia 1-mark V” (Sony). Hence, they are more likely to purchase that product as it is the first thing that comes to their mind when they are looking to upgrade their phones. 

Apple also lets their products speak for themselves and rarely engages in bombastic and aggressive marketing. During their launch events, products are always Centre-Staged as the star of the show, with large images of their products shown on the screen behind the presenter, and minimal text explaining the features, creating a minimalistic feel.

Source: Apple

By placing the large images of their products at the Centre of the screen, it amplifies the product and catches the attention of their potential customers. The simple descriptions also do not distract the viewer, allowing them to focus on the product and invoking a clear memory, which in turn leads to greater memory retention and greater purchase rates. Furthermore, Apple also has a practice of summarising all the features of their products in one Keynote slide, as shown below:

Source: Apple

By doing so, the potential customer’s process of getting to know more about their products is greatly simplified, as all the new and important features about their new products are being presented  at a glance. Furthermore, by placing the most important features at the Centre of the screen, it increases the memory retention of consumers,  one of the biggest goals in marketing a company’s product to the public. 

Putting customers first Apple always puts their customers at the centre of every campaign or marketing message.  In their advertisements and marketing efforts, instead of continuously emphasising on the details of their products, they are more likely to emphasise how your life is going to be impacted, and how you are going to impact others around you when you use their products. An example of this is the “Behind the Mac” campaign series, featuring musicians, writers, architects, artists, filmmakers and many other professionals in various different fields using the Mac to “change and impact the world”. This will create the impression that Mac users are always those who are doing big things to make an impact on  society, and people are more likely to associate Mac with serious work, something that Pros use to churn out important pieces of work

Another notable campaign is the “Privacy. That’s iPhone” campaign launched to emphasise how secure their phones are. The slogan is catchy and easy to remember, but the more interesting thing to note is their poster.

Source: Apple

In this poster, a person holds an iPhone which covers his entire face. This carries a message that the face of the person, which represents the data of individuals, is being hidden by the iPhone he was holding in his hand. This further underlines the message that the company is trying to convey, that the iPhone protects all your data and privacy. 

Lastly, the most obvious and classic example of Apple’s customer-centric marketing is how they marketed their iPod. Officially launched in 2001, the iPod lineup sold millions of units before being cancelled officially in 2022. When Apple launched the iPod in 2001, instead of saying: “We have 5 Gigabytes (GB) of storage”, they developed a slogan that goes: “A thousand songs in your pocket”.

Source: Apple

As compared to the very technical term “5 GB”, “A thousand songs in your pocket” actually struck a chord with potential customers as they may not understand the meaning of 5 GB, much less having an idea on how many songs can fit into 5 GB of storage space. However, “A thousand songs” actually conveys the main idea that the iPod has a large storage capacity as “1 000” is a much larger number than “5”, It makes potential customers really think that the iPod has a gigantic amount of storage and they are able to easily fit their entire playlist in it, allowing more people to purchase iPods and hence boosting Apple’s iPod sales.

In conclusion, there is a reason why Apple is able to keep selling their products in millions of units per year. Good marketing is such a fundamental part of a company’s success as a huge reason why potential customers want to purchase products from a particular company is due to marketing techniques. Good marketing can also create a positive brand image, allowing the company to establish themselves as the cream of the industry benchmark. In doing so, they gain customers’ trust which helps them to mark-up their prices and maintain their huge following, even if the products are not necessarily better than what the company had  released before. All in all, Apple is a very interesting company, and it is really fun to go behind the scenes and discover the wonderful techniques they use to sell their products.