Selling Rebels: Apple's Marketing Techniques

Buying a new computer or upgrading your operating system is an exciting event: in some it produces feelings surpassed only by marriage or landing a dream job. And the excitement is increased when you make a major change, be it a brand new monster rig replacing your dinosaur that's been limping along for a decade or-in the most extreme of changes-making the switch from PC to Mac.

And I say PC to Mac because conventional wisdom holds that once you go Mac, you never go back. While you may find a few Mac users who have grown disgruntled with Apple or decided to adapt a platform that is almost one-hundred percent universal (Windows is pre-installed on every PC shipped by Dell, HP, Gateway, and Toshiba), for the most part the big switch is from the house that Bill Gates built to the small but sturdy home of Steve Jobs as opposed to the other way around.

Practicality is a major motivating factor behind the switch: Macs are routinely less susceptible to viruses. The Mac OSX operating system is more stable and updates for it are less frequent. It also allows users to do simple house-keeping tasks that require special downloads for Windows, tasks such as reducing deleted data to non-recoverable ones and zeros, a measure that helps protect privacy and boost hard drive space. This translates into money saved on anti-virus and maintenance software and more time spent doing things that don't involve waiting for a malware-killing program to run a full system check followed by a restart-or the most dreaded of all last ditch tactics, a clean system restore.

Of course, Mac OSX also comes standard with programs that let you create movies, make DVDs (with menus and everything!), edit photos, and even make your own music and record your own podcasts. Comparable programs are available for Windows, but they don't come standard. So for entry-level techno geeks that want to put their family vacation in a nice little package but don't want to buy one extra program after another to do so, a Mac is a wise choice.

But consumerism is a multi-layered study, and we all know that there's always more than one reason we buy something. In a politically-divided America where corporate campaign contributions are a hot-button topic, politics can play a starring role in a computer user's choices. According to BuyBlue.org, both Apple and Microsoft have donated to Democratic candidates: in fact, Microsoft has given nearly half a million dollars to the blue party while Apple is just shy of the $80 thousand mark. But it's also of note that Microsoft has given over a half a million to Republicans, while Apple has given the party of the elephant not one red cent. Not to mention Al Gore is on Apple's board of directors, and Steve Jobs served as an advisor on John Kerry's campaign staff. Apple computers have a reputation of appealing to liberals-I wonder why.

Let's face it though; for all the talk about politics, nobody really cares. They get fired up over a few issues and only then around election season. The population of America that actually takes politics seriously is very small. So how a company spends their campaign money isn't going to affect the decisions made by many consumers. And if practicality was an actual motivating factor in purchasing decisions, SUVs wouldn't outsell hybrids. As with anything, image is what hooks people making the switch-even if it is seen as icing on the cake.

Mac addicts are known for being hip and trendy urban youths with tattoos and piercings, or sophisticated academic types with discriminating tastes in food and wine. Mac users are stereotypically artsy and creative Chuck-Taylor-wearing punks that revel in sticking it to the man as well as learned and eloquent freelancers. Who wouldn't want to be in on that club? Who wouldn't want to be unique and expressive, and more concerned with making great movies and websites than spreadsheets and corny marketing presentations? Even looking at the schematics of the companies' names clues consumers into the cultures associated with each brand: Apple brings to mind something colorful, versatile, good for you, and fun; Microsoft sounds like, well, something you'd find at work.

The marketing team at Apple have kept the idea of Apple's rebellious fun versus Microsoft's stuff-shirted discipline alive in the public conscious. Just look at the current Mac versus PC commercials. There's Justin Long as the casual, laid-back, college geek Mac talking smack with the uptight, suit-wearing, insecure PC played by humorist John Hodgman. While these commercials give some lip service to the greater practical value of a Mac, most of the time is spent discussing how much more fun the Mac is-and the mode of dress of the actor portraying the Mac character goes a long way in driving that fact home.

Apple has shown however, that marketing doesn't end with TV ads: the Apple products themselves are advertisements. How many mall walkers pass by the Apple Store and see all those sleek, sexy iPods and shiny laptops with clean, smooth edges and streamlined graphical user interfaces? Even before you buy an Apple product, you've got it in your mind that the simple act of word processing is going to be sheer joy: how could anything be dull and monotonous on that funky little machine!

Steve Jobs and company aren't just selling computers and digital music players: they're selling a lifestyle and an image as well. They've turned everything about the company into a commercial, in a sense that goes beyond prominently displaying the company logo on their products. It's working too: iPods are everywhere, the unveiling of the iPhone was front-page news, and the Apple retail stores are starting to pop up more and more frequently. And according to a recent Gartner Group survey, Apple's share of the American home computer market jumped from 5% in 2005 to 5.1% in 2006. Considering how big the market for home computers is in America, a tenth of a percent is a noticeable gain.

I myself am a recent convert. I had used an iMac in college (the head of the English department was a Mac addict of the old-school variety) and found that I could do more in fewer clicks. After college I bought an iPod so that I wouldn't have to lug around my CD collection in a bulky notebook and a laptop so that I could work on my writing anywhere. It was a Dell Inspiron 1200, not what I wanted (an Apple) but what I could afford. It was a good machine, though after about a year it was no longer dependable. It would freeze, stall, take several minutes to load a program, and if I tried to play songs on iTunes while using OpenOffice, forget it. It was the night a strange blue screen with alien-like characters showed up that I decided I was tired of giving Mr. Gates my hard-earned dollars and years of my life. A few months later, I was the proud owner of a MacBook.

Do I feel hip and trendy? Well, I'm already a pierced and tattooed twenty-something that wears Chuck Taylors and votes Democrat, so I guess the Apple computer just sealed the deal. Actually, I'm smart enough to realize that a computer does not a lifestyle make, but I'm also not ignorant to the fact that somewhere in the back of my mind is the idea that people will make certain assumptions about me when I go into Starbucks and fire up my laptop with the glowing apple on the back of the screen, nor does it escape that I've just become a billboard.

Sources
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"Apple Inc." Wikipedia. URL:(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.)

Edward F. Moltzen, "Gartner: HP Pulling Away From Dell In PC Market Share." CRN. URL:(http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=196901645&cid=CRNBreakingNews)

"Get a Mac." Wikipedia. URL:(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Mac)

"Microsoft Corporation." BuyBlue.org. URL:(http://www.buyblue.org/node/1526/view/summary)

Steinman, Jon. "Berkshire's Buffet, Apple's Jobs Join Kerry Advisers (Correct)." Bloomberg.com. URL:(http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aIzb2nc.YIIE)

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