6 Marketing Lessons I Learned From Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs shaped the way I see brands and marketing today. His return to Apple coincided with the start of my own fascination with what I do now. He was one of those people whose every move made you think. Why did it work out for him? Why don't others do the same?

So here's my small tribute to a man who shaped me to some degree – the marketing lessons I picked up watching him over the years. I try to apply them in my own company too, though many of them take a will of iron – a trait that's very hard to fake ;-) I hope they're useful to you.

Start without worrying about what others will think.

One of Jobs's unique skills as a manager was the courage to just start, without worrying about what others would say. People who can do that are called visionaries. Jobs wasn't the first. Henry Ford, when he was bringing cars into mass production, was reportedly asked whether he listened to consumer feedback. He's said to have replied:

If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse!

Jobs held consumer research in exactly the same regard. When he launched the NeXT computer in 1988, he said:

You can't just ask consumers what they want and then try to give it to them. By the time you've built it, they'll already want something new!

So if you feel like you have a genuinely innovative idea, do it. Don't wait for others' approval, don't ask “can I” or “what do you think.” The people you're asking don't know half of what you know. Show them, and they'll get it.

Do what you do as well as you possibly can. So you can sleep at night.

In 1985, the Mac was riding high. The first computer with a graphical interface sold like hotcakes. It was expensive, but its success came from the fact that – even though it was mass-produced – it was designed with craftsman-level attention to detail. In a Playboy interview from 1985, Jobs described his philosophy on building products like this:

(…) When you're a carpenter building a beautiful bookcase, you won't slap some cheap plywood on the back, even though you know the bookcase will stand against a wall and no one will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so instead you'll use a beautiful piece of wood. Just so you can sleep at night…

When you're running a company, you don't need to keep an eye on the competition. Do what you're good at, as well as you possibly can. Believe it or not, everyone expects… less from you. So you'll pleasantly surprise them by giving it your all, every single time. And I mean every time. Especially since “doing your best” will never be more than you can actually give, right?

Real artists ship!

I have a friend who paints. She's painted very few pictures in her life, because… she keeps fixing them. I'm sure she's thrown out more than she's sold. And even the ones she did sell had to be pried out of her hands. She paints with real devotion, because she's a craftsman at heart, and she wants to do the best possible job. The problem is, tomorrow you can always improve something a little more. Every artist has this problem. But only a few manage to say “stop” and show their work to the world.

Andy Hertzfeld, who worked at Apple in 1984 (the year the first Macintosh shipped), describes his experience of the final days before launch. The engineering team was convinced the operating system still needed more polish, so they asked Jobs for a delay to the ship date. Jobs refused. He's said to have replied:

Real artists ship!

If I had to explain the phenomenon of Jobs's success as a manager and a visionary, I'd bet the most money on a unique combination of two traits: an obsessive attention to detail (which has a lot in common with craft and art) and the hard-nosed ability to cut himself off from his own work and show it to the world (a trait more typical of accountants and managers, the people who live by budgets and deadlines).

A visionary surrounded by pragmatists

Unfortunately, that combination of traits is extremely rare. I think even Jobs himself was never quite able to fully let go of his obsessive attachment to detail. What he could do, though, was surround himself with people who were able to talk him out of it.

Simon Sinek, in his excellent book Start With Why, argues that there are two types of managers. On one side are the visionaries, who manage to inspire others not by telling them what to do, but because they're able to show why something needs to be done. Jobs was exactly that kind of visionary. In 1984, he managed to convince people to lock themselves in a separate building within the company, fly a pirate flag over the entrance, and work relentlessly on the new Macintosh. But Steve Jobs without Steve Wozniak would have been nobody. Because the second type of manager is people who know how something needs to be done. They have technical know-how, they live inside budgets, deadlines, and constraints. They're not visionaries, but without them the vision never becomes real. Jonathan Ive (responsible at Apple for, among other things, the revolutionary iMac and iPhone designs) and Tim Cook (a capable manager who took over running the company after Jobs stepped down) are examples of people who are essential for keeping a visionary grounded.

What about you? Which type are you? If you have more of the artist and visionary in you, make sure there's someone around you who keeps you grounded in reality. Or maybe you'd rather turn visions into action, organize things? In that case, you need a creative counterpart, because on your own your business can slide into routine.

A brand is an idea.

For the past three decades, marketers around the world have been arriving at a conclusion Jobs already sensed back in the 1980s: that in mature markets, people buy products not for their functional traits (let's be honest, any computer can check your email and write a letter, any car can get you to work), but for emotional ones, for the bigger idea behind the brand. Apple's vision lay in the fact that, as early as 1984… they treated the computer market like a mature one. And they weren't selling a computer, they were selling an idea.

The now-famous “1984” ad, directed by Ridley Scott, never mentioned what kind of computer it was. It focused entirely on why you needed to have it.

The idea of the Apple brand as a “revolution” let the company expand its range into music players, phones, tablets. Because people, every single time, weren't buying a “product,” they were buying an “idea.”

Take a look at this ad. Made in 1997 by the agency TBWA/Chiat/Day, it dates from a time when Apple only made computers. But today it could just as easily advertise their entire product range. Because it sells an idea.

What about you? What idea does your brand sell? Why would people care about it?

A brand is focus.

One last thing, one of my favorites. Do you know what Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple in 1998 to pull the company out of its slump? He got rid of most of the products in the catalog. Throughout the 90s, Apple sold not just the Macintosh (in various models with forgettable names like the LC 550 or LC 575), but also had the Quadra (610, 630, 650), the Performa (5200, 5300, etc.), the PowerBook (190, 1400), and the Power Macintosh (4400, 5500, 6500, 7300) in its lineup. Jobs erased the grid, where one axis split into portable and desktop devices, and the other into professional and consumer. Into the four resulting boxes, he placed the Power Macintosh (professional, desktop), the PowerBook (professional, portable), the Macintosh (consumer, desktop)… and one segment stayed empty. The Macintosh was replaced by the iMac, and the empty spot in the table was filled by the iBook. Everyone suddenly knew which computer was right for them. Apple still sells this way today: iPods (4 models), the iPhone (one model, varying only by storage and carrier), or iPads (2 models – with and without cellular).

Your brand doesn't need to be for everyone. The more discipline you impose on yourself around focus, the more you'll earn from loyal customers. Apple makes more money from a single phone model than Nokia does from all of its models combined. Porsche makes more profit selling its handful of models than Fiat or Toyota do trying their luck across every market.

And speaking of Porsche. One last Jobs quote. Asked about his thoughts on Apple's small share of the computer market, he replied:

Apple's share of the computer market is bigger than BMW's, Mercedes's, or Porsche's share of the car market. What's so wrong with being a BMW or a Mercedes?

What about you? Would you want your company to be the Mercedes of its market, or the Fiat?