Mac's Marketing Genius

As a former marketing maven, I'm constantly observing and analysing how companies market themselves. I'm probably very slow on the uptake on this one, but the other day as I was watching another of those "Mac and PC" commercials, it suddenly dawned on me what a brilliant ad campaign it was. The ads are funny and entertaining, but the real genius is in the strategy behind the ads. Apple is taking advantage of their unique place in the market by doing two things very well.

First, they are highlighting their superior technology in the form of their operating system not by beating us over the head with technological mumbo-jumbo, but by very simply personalizing (literally and figuratively) the experience. The Mac is cool, laid back, and hassle-free, while PC is geeky, uptight, and angst-producing. This has been the message of the Mac user community for some time.

The second element of their strategy is more subtle and just as powerful. They are taking advantage of the fact that PC technology has become a commodity. While Apple makes both the Mac and its operating system, PCs have numerous manufacturers albeit only Microsoft makes the Vista operating system. However, for all of Microsoft's marketshare in the software business, their operating systems have always been buggy, especially when first released.

What Apple has done very well, then, is to divide and conquer. Their ads attack PC hardware with impunity because their is no single brand being called out. It just doesn't make sense for a Dell or Sony to spend to counter the Apple ads. Yet they are able to attack the one monolith in their way, Microsoft, in its soft underbelly -- the legendary weakness of their operating systems. In one set of pithy, entertaining ads, Apple is able to dispense with both PC hardware manufactures and the largest software provider. Apple has managed to leverage their own great strength -- the integration of their hardware and operating software -- to fully take advantage of their market position as the singular source of the Mac brand.

This is a blog about writing, so why am I talking about marketing? Well, superficially, just because I wanted to. But on a deeper level, what Apple's marketing and ad execs did was to find and crystalize their message, and then present it in a very clear and entertaining way. The success of their "Mac and PC" ad campaign is as much about analytical, strategic thinking as it is about crafting the message. I can't think of too many things that are more relevant to successful writing than that.