Apple: Think Different

Nobody "gets" their customers like Apple does.And if you are a proud owner of one of the marvelous Apple products, you are not him.Apple had only one customer: Steve Jobs.

And Steve Jobs thought you the customer is an idiot, who doesn't know what he wants and it is Apple's job to tell them what you want. The entire Apple lineup of products and their ecosystem reflects this ideology. The touch screen UI, an intuitive and fluid design, which even your grandma could understand and fall in love with. Apple made all the complicated jargon and specs irrelevant and turned the dreadful incomprehensible technology into an enriching experience. An experience, which everyone could indulge into and fall in love with.

The Revival of Apple in 1997

But it was not so rosy back in the day. Lets go back to the year 1997, Steve jobs was back as the CEO, after Apple acquired NeXT. Some people say the only reason for the acquisition was to get Steve Jobs back. Such was the dire situation that Apple was stuck in, that they had to bring back Steve Jobs after he was infamously and unceremoniously thrown out of the company that he had founded because Apple's board of directors had lost faith in his leadership.

Steve Jobs dived right in to clean up the mess that Apple was in. He immediately realized that Apple's plagues were internal as well as external, that the company needed a major cultural shift. Gone were the days of Apple being the true innovators company, now it was another Me-Too brand, their products indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd. Steve Jobs realigned the entire product line, removed all the clutter and made Apple focus its entire synergies on creating few but innovative never seen before products. But Steve also wanted the world to know that Apple was truly back.

And so the Think Different campaign was born.

The Think Different Campaign

The Think Different campaign was his battle cry.

Steve Jobs ordered the creation of a campaign that reflected the philosophy he thought had to be reinforced within the company. This philosophy had to be adopted at every level, from product to marketing. His philosophy is Apple's DNA, which will hopefully never diminish, even after the great man's demise.

Steve Jobs in interview for PBS 'One Last Thing' documentary, 1994"When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is - everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again."