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John Tantillo's Brand Winner... And Loser: Apple and Schwarzenegger
Posted by The Marketing Doctor at 5/24/2009 11:12 PM 
Categories: Branding
Tags: applications promotion Legislature brand Cartier California marketing crisis target market programmers Bill Whalen fundamentals Tantillo Schwarzenegger users Apple branding CA
Categories: Branding
Tags: applications promotion Legislature brand Cartier California marketing crisis target market programmers Bill Whalen fundamentals Tantillo Schwarzenegger users Apple branding CA
Brand Winner… | And Loser |
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John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week:
Winner: Apple
Loser: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Folks, it’s a holiday weekend, and I will keep it short:
The Winner
Apple.
Apple has been my winner before (read some of those posts here, here and here), but in keeping with the central marketing concept that successful brands consistently make small —yet critically responsive and intelligent— brand decisions I couldn’t resist this week’s story.
A recap: Cartier sued Apple over two applications for Apple devices that it said violated Cartier copyright. Apple immediately withdrew the applications from its stores. Cartier promptly withdrew its lawsuit. Here’s that story in the Wall Street Journal.
Not a big deal, you say.
Correct. But why?
Because Apple didn’t let it become a big deal. The company responded immediately. When an airplane pilot flies from New York to London, he or she has to make many course corrections simply to stay on course. Winds, the curvature of the earth and dozens of other variables mean he or she must remain responsive to change. Between Point A and Point B, the only straight lines in this life are the ones we make by our vigilance and adaptability.
A healthy brand is constantly making these course corrections, and the key is responding promptly and correctly to evolving realities.
Apple has built devices that other people —i.e., programmers and users— have added even more value to by creating applications. Apple doesn’t want to micro-manage this independent creation because it will douse the creative spirit and the accessibility of its product. The risk is that copyright infringement happens— but it’s a risk that Apple can counter by being responsive when problems arise.
An arrogant company could have become embroiled in a legal morass with Cartier; Apple is too smart for that. Real marketing is built around a sophisticated and “living” dyad —a two-directional relationship between seller and buyer that is predicated on satisfying needs on both sides. The dyad is alive, adapting and moving at all times.
We can all do with a real marketing bite from this Apple.
The Loser
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I have praised his brand in the past, but unfortunately, the Governor is at risk for losing what once seemed to be an invincible brand status.
California is a mess, and voters have pushed it to the brink of a major crisis. As of this writing, it is unclear how things could turn out well for either the embattled governor or his state.
How did this happen?
It’s easy to speculate, but I want to focus on what we know based on real marketing, not political guessing.
Bill Whalen made an excellent point about the governor in a piece he did for The Wall Street Journal this week. Basically, he traces Schwarzenegger’s current problem right back to his first year in office.
Whalen’s argument is that Schwarzenegger had incredible brand capital in Year 1 and could have forced a showdown that would have radically and positively restructured California, preventing the paralysis and fiscal disaster that is happening now.
Obviously, this is speculative too, but the marketing point is not.
Whalen makes the mistake of dismissing some of Schwarzenegger’s initiatives as simply the strengths of a “skilled marketer.” Boy, I can’t stand this “just marketing” attitude (so prevalent and so wrong). The point I want to make is that, in fact, Schwarzenegger wasn’t a skilled marketer when it came to the biggest element of his brand and mission as governor. Not forcing this showdown in his first year as Governor of California represented a major marketing failure.
In addition to the thousands of course corrections a brand must make as it grows, there are also pivotal moments when a brand must assess its leverage and then employ that leverage, even if it means conflict.
This is the opportunity that the Schwarzenegger brand missed early on. Had he taken on the Legislature and used his brand capital to force change, he and his state would be in a very different position today. But this would have required tough choices like raising taxes and cutting services in order to identify and satisfy the needs of the electorate —his chief Target Market.
That’s real marketing.
The individual initiatives (health, environment, etc.) are secondary marketing concerns, as are the clever publicity pushes and tie-ins. Real marketing for Schwarzenegger would have been creating a legislative environment that was more conducive to working with his brand —a change that the people of California wanted him to make, by the way.
Marketing is not synonymous with promotion. In fact, real marketing uses promotion as only one of a much larger set of tools. What Whalen is referring to is pseudo-marketing. When Schwarzenegger missed that opportunity early on to go head-to-head with the Legislature, he showed that he was a poor marketer… What has followed is merely a series of well planned but ultimately doomed-to-fail, stand-alone promotions.
It’s difficult to see how Schwarzenegger is going to be able to adequately address this fundamental mistake now. He no longer has the brand capital that he had when he first came into office.
If he does manage to overcome this brand crisis, my guess is that it will be by getting back to fundamentals, using the current crisis as a way to re-assert and re-introduce the Schwarzenegger brand as an agent of change that returns the power to the people. If he can somehow regain the ground of Outsider and Reformer, he might yet set the real marketing foundation for the future of his brand and California’s.
And remember, it’s always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -
The most successful brands rely on responsive course corrections to maintain their strength. There is no such thing as automatic pilot in real marketing.
good comparison. your in depth analysis on apple is the best.
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Your point about Apple is great. This lack of arrogance and focus upon getting on with it must also reflect that brand quality to consumers of Apple's product.
If an organistion is brutal in its approach to competing I know for sure that this sticks in my mind as a brand association... for a long time.
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