Scroll down for the full video. The slightly modified transcript below is taken from the famous marketing speech by Steve Jobs in 1997. Image taken from ProFundCom.
Values
“To me marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It’s a very noisy world and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us. Now Apple fortunately is one of the half a dozen best brands in the whole world right up there with Nike, Disney, Coke and Sony. It is one of the greats of the greats, not just in this country but all around the globe.
Functional value
But even a great brand needs investment and caring if it’s going to retain its relevance and vitality. And the Apple brand has clearly suffered from neglect in this area in the last few years and we need to bring it back. The way to do that is not to talk about speeds and feeds, it’s not to talk about nips and megahertz, it’s not to talk about why we’re better than windows (i.e. functional value).
Emotional value
The best example of all and one of the greatest jobs of marketing in the universe has ever seen is Nike. Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes and yet when you think of Nike you feel something different than a shoe company. In their ads, as you know, they don’t ever talk about the product. They don’t ever tell you about their air soles and why they’re better than reebok’s air soles. What Nike does in their advertising is they honor great athletes and they honor great athletics, that’s who they are, that’s what they are about (i.e. emotional value).
Think different
Our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for. Where do we fit in this world and what we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done (i.e. functional value), although we do that well. We do that better than almost anybody in some cases.
But Apple’s about something more than that. Apple at the core is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better (i.e. emotional value). That’s what we believe and we’ve had the opportunity to work with people like that. We’ve had an opportunity to work with people like you. With software developers or with customers who have done it in some big and some small ways. We believe that in this world people can change it for the better. And that those people that are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that actually do. So what we’re going to do in our first brand marketing campaign in several years is to is to get back to that core value.”