Apple has a unique relationship with advertising, which goes against a rule that a global brand must imperatively adapt or even transform its message to stick to the culture of each of its many markets.

Instead, Apple is spreading the same message and images all over the world. However, this policy suffers from a few exceptions here and there. Like all deviations, they are rare and must be justified, as explained to us by Ken Segall, an advertiser who worked for Steve Jobs for a long time. The Apple boss had a very specific idea of ​​what he wanted for his company's communication and how the marketing creation should work. Since his disappearance, this policy has remained in place, but things have changed in the organization.

Today, Apple communicates even more and more often. First, because its product portfolio has grown and diversified. If we take a comparison over ten years, at the time it had only one iPhone against five ranges currently, no iPad, no Pencil, no Apple Watch, no AirPods, no HomePod, no of Siri, no Face ID, no Animojis, no Apple Pay… More or less strong themes but which have all been the occasion to promote them through one or more advertisements.

We should also mention a few clips on peripheral subjects such as the environment and gay marriage, or his traditional Christmas ads, those also designed for the Chinese New Year or his long films shown at the opening of all his keynotes (September 2014, WWDC 2017, September 2017 or WWDC 2018, for example). Last example of these campaigns which surf on the news, the Football World Cup which is the occasion, for at least two editions, to speak surreptitiously of the iPhone.

1 product, 1 message

Before discussing the exceptions, it is worth recalling the general rule that could be summed up by “1 product, 1 message”. Ken Segall worked as creative director in a division of the great advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day — the 1984 ad, the Think Different campaign, the launch of the iMac with its "i" which will be used until thirstier, Get a Mac campaign, iPod silhouettes, and more. He was the link between Jobs and the agency's creative teams. He had also already worked for Jobs at the time of NeXT. In addition to his blog, he is the author of the book Apple: the secret of an incredible success, published in 2012.

In an email exchange, he explained to us at length why Steve Jobs had decided to take the opposite view of what was practiced elsewhere, among other advertisers working for large groups. When Jobs returns to Apple, almost everything has to be redone and he bears the scars of his forced departure:

Jobs had formed a solid friendship with Lee Clow at TBWA\Chiat\Day, who had made 1984 for the first Macintosh. Back at Apple, Jobs separated from the agency his predecessor had chosen and he put TBWA\Chiat\Day back in the saddle: "Steve had confidence in the agency and in its options (even if the internal debates could be heated !)”

The agency persuaded Jobs to centralize the development of advertising campaigns, in contrast to what many other global brands were doing, which gave more autonomy to their local agencies, on the pretext that they would be better able to develop tailor-made marketing for their respective countries:

The operation was pyramidal, reflections and creation by a small American team then widely distributed throughout the world: "Steve was not interested in completely modifying the marketing message for each country, because he thought that a good product transcends this necessity” continues Ken Segall. “Above all, the Apple brand was the company's most important asset — and he didn't want to dilute it by fragmenting marketing. »

The choice to stamp each of the products with a "Designed by Apple in California" stemmed from this desire to differentiate Apple equipment from other brands, to apply a patina imprint of this singularity of the west coast, if not to be able to register that it was made in California: "Steve has always believed that Apple was a global company, and that the 'Apple Way' had a strong power of attraction everywhere in the world" (read also: "Designed by Apple in California,” a 30-year campaign).

"Some bosses would immediately refuse the idea of ​​a campaign that cannot be deployed internationally," explains Ken Segall, who underlines Jobs' open-mindedness from the moment the game was worth it:

The credo was that “the concept should remain the same, but each country was encouraged to be imaginative in its implementation. This was of course not systematic. The ads for the first iMac in France were identical to those broadcast in the United States. We've all seen the same colorful silhouette ads for the iPod too. But when the opportunity presented itself, Apple gave the green light to a few deviations:

This was not an isolated example, insists Ken Segall, such initiatives were encouraged and validated as soon as "the look and feel of the campaign was preserved, the message remained the same and this effort participated strengthen the Apple brand. You can therefore take a switch to go on other tracks, but the experience of the journey and the destination must remain unchanged.

You could say that the advertising of Apple products is declined in three ways. There are major campaigns applied uniformly from country to country. Take this YouTube page from Apple Japan and this one from Apple Türkiye. Almost all of their content is identical. Whether talking about Mac, iPhone or Apple Watch, Apple uses identical clips. For the iPad Pro, it's the same American teenager with her Stranger Things look (another worldwide popular success) who rides her bike in the streets of New York and asks her neighbor what a PC is.

Rather than adapting films to give them a more local flavor, sometimes it is enough to include people from all walks of life. Thus, inside some ads, products are no longer seen exclusively through a purely American prism. A global brand, Apple shows users in Europe, Asia, Africa… from all over the planet. The latest Behind the Mac campaign spotlights two US users, but a third is in Rwanda.

And then there are creations that you only see in a few countries, if not only one. In Turkey, Children's Day in the spring has been the occasion for a special campaign for some years. This year it was for the iPad and its Pencil. In Japan, last summer, there were these three pubs to encourage people to switch to the iPhone. They depict a person and his double as a puppet. These clips did not exit their respective markets.

Why this campaign "Made with the iPhone" taking as sites the three largest cities in France? Apple France does not go into much detail and refers to the two previous operations mentioned above, simply declaring that each time it is a question of “celebrating French creativity”. Still, this concept of cities could have been applied in many countries, where creativity is just as abundant. But France is obviously an exception, or is Apple's advertising agency more active there than elsewhere?

Even among operators who have been accustomed to keeping the little finger of their creativity on the seam of the pants, there are sometimes surprises. SFR had designed a nice film in 2014 for the iPhone 5s and the 4G network (video). Orange also has a few to its name, like this one for the iPhone X or this funny one for the iPhone 7.

Steve Jobs never wanted the communications team at Apple to be too involved in major projects: "He relied on Lee Clow and his team at TBWA\Chiat\Day to come up with product campaigns and institutional campaigns, then asks people internally, at Apple, to deploy them on the website and in Apple Stores. »

Over the years, this group's pressure for greater influence grew, but Jobs maintained this separation: “He respected the agency's previous work for Apple and the quality of their thinking. I never heard him say it verbally, but I think to some degree he liked to have that "independent outside opinion" when it came to design and strategy. »

The agreement was good between Jobs and Clow, continues Segall, there was mutual respect and good energy on the TBWA\Chiat\Day side, while the internal team at Apple was chomping at the bit and suffering from frustration not to be more involved:

From then on, Apple could design campaigns directly in-house, as did its agency previously, which was and remains under contract today. "From what I understand, the agency is no longer 'responsible' for orders, instead it finds itself in a forced competition with Apple's creative team — but still it has to be invited to preparatory meetings. The roles are completely reversed. »

Tor Myrhen's hiring wasn't the only sign of change underway at Apple. As part of the Apple-Samsung lawsuit, exchanges of furious letters from Phil Schiller with his agency were made public. Samsung had scored some points with its ads mocking iPhone customers queuing outside Apple Stores and Schiller wanted proposals to turn the tide (read: Apple v Samsung: Phil Schiller goes off the rails against the advertising agency of 'Apple). The idea of ​​terminating this contract also floated in the air.

Friction between the new TBWA team and Apple's team was dragging the relationship further and further down. Steve Jobs was the person preventing this from happening, and without him, the Inner Group had absolute control.

Segall remembers discussions that could be stormy in Jobs' time, passionate exchanges. While without Jobs, without this daily involvement of the big boss, and given the new tensions that have emerged, the agency must now walk on eggshells:

Is the result better… or worse? For the former executive at Apple France, the appreciation is salty: "Apple TV ads have just become flat, quite soothing and boring overall..." As for Ken Segall, he is in a more diplomatic register but where this transpires what he must think about it: "everyone will make up their own mind".