13.1. The chasm

Branding is a classic topic in marketing education. It stands for itself as a discipline and a brand appears to be anchored on three pillars [GIG 15]:

• – its vocation, which expresses its mission, representativeness and finality, i.e. what the brand lives for;
• – its authority, which signifies its status, dignity and character, i.e. what the brand radiates;
• – its creativity. Here lies its genius, the innovation it brings to the virtual space of words and symbols, i.e. what does the brand leave as an imprint.

However, when it comes to innovating, and re-innovating, the cross-pursuit game that makes competitor friction so complex is not as trivial as it may be in more stable markets. It confers branding the enhancing of its role: to be a proxy of the real thing.

Has branding become a synthetic art of doing business in a virtual space? This leads us to place branding as a last chapter drawing on previous ones. Let us take an example.

13.1.2. Apple

The leader is assessed on the impetus and value he manages to provide for the brand in the long-term. Of course, Steve Jobs had an eye on the AAPL stock market share price, and issued internal memos when symbolic values were reached, but nothing more.

Figure 13.1 is extracted from a 1997 video (which included the famous “Think Different” ad). It is of poor image quality, yet is probably the best testimony we can find about Steve Jobs’ Apple brand vision.

In the video, Steve has just returned to Apple. He has a myriad of vital things to do, and decisions to take, to keep Apple alive, which seemed an impossible task at that time.

Despite these difficulties, he takes part of his precious time to talk about the Apple brand. Steve’s vision of the brand is the one of company identity, company core values. This is the way the company wants to be perceived by the public. Far from an empty mission statement which nobody cares about, it’s meant to be a meaningful and stable reference point, to which any employee must feel committed.

In the above video, Steve explains that Apple “believes people with passion can change the world”. And that is its core value.

13.2. Amplifying the gap and progressing

In Appendix 5, the qualitative and quantitative concepts that establish a brand are characterized in-depth using the Trialectics methodology (an original and transdisciplinary engineering method, of thought processes that helps us to think out-of-the-box). They found the complexity of a brand, around the resulting notions of vocation, creativity and authority. The synthetic results obtained exacerbate the end point: that a brand is above all a frequency, a tune in the perceivable spectrum of all frequencies.

The complexity of a brand is best evidenced when using the Trialectics methodology. In the case of the Apple brand, Jobs cared most about a particular “frequency” that could be perceived unequivocally. More specifically:

• – Apple’s brand vocation has a representative mission, a scope breathing sustainably. Such commissioning profession has been openly demonstrated in countless public presentations.
• – Its creativity spells innovation, genius and singularity. Little doubt that most of the firm’s products bring just that.
• – Finally, its authority is clearly backed by statute and character. The power behind the brand (e.g. through the historical logos) confers a control on the personality of the firm.

Due to Trialectics, we can now witness the extent of the match of Apple brand with an ontological notion of a brand. There has been a striking effort to forge a brand that speaks of ...a brand.

Few companies dare to address the brand issue at such an ambitious level. The brand is often left to the communications department, as a secondary logo, or unified visual identity issue, as appearing through documentation, invoices, Website, etc. Of course, these things matter too, but ultimately they may change. However, the core values do not.

Many CEOs fail to understand that, unless their personal life is worth writing books about, the general public does not care about them as individuals. They tend to mix up the promotion of their own image with the one of their company, with the ridiculous belief that once convinced of how amazing they are, the public will buy their products (even though they admit they can be lousy), and be faithful to the brand.

Would these CEOs make a public presentation in casual attire, like Steve in this video?

Although this was not the public perception when he was alive, Steve Jobs was not like these CEOs who would spend more time with the press than running their company. Steve’s interviews were rather exceptional, and, most of the time, part of a product launch campaign, therefore centered around Apple and its products, and not his personal life.

With a 67% rise in Brand Value to $247 billion, Apple returned in 2015 to number one in the BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking.

The value of the brand lies in the fact that the customer accepts to pay a higher price for the brand they trust, and be faithful to it.

This second aspect is something very unusual, in times where customers are known to easily switch from one supplier to another, looking for best bargain, down to every cent spared.

The strength of the Apple brand is supported by customer satisfaction rates that no Apple competitor has ever achieved: 91% for the iPad (2010), 92% for the iPhone (2007) and 97% for the Apple watch (2015) (figures published after product launch). These figures are unprecedented in mass produced consumer goods.

“Things that were made in the past are the past.”

John Lennon