Apple Marketing Philosophy | Steve Jobs

Mike Markkula wrote the Apple Marketing Philosophy when Apple was commenced.

Who was Mike Markkula? First big Apple investor and chairman, a father figure to Jobs.

He taught Jobs about marketing and sales. “Mike really took me under his wing,” Jobs recalled. “His values were much aligned with mine. He emphasized that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.”

Markkula wrote his principles in a one-page paper titled “The Apple Marketing Philosophy” that stressed three points.

The first was Empathy, An intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: “We will truly understand their needs better than any other company.”

The second was Focus: “In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.”

The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was Impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys.

“People DO judge a book by its cover,” he wrote. “We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.”

 For the rest of his career, Jobs would understand the needs and desires of customers better than any other business leader, he would focus on a handful of core products, and he would care, sometimes obsessively, about marketing and image and even the details of packaging.

“When you open the box of an iPhone or iPad, we want that tactile experience to set the tone for how you perceive the product,” he said. “Mike taught me that.”