Steve Jobs on Marketing
In 1997, Steve Jobs said something pretty eye-opening about marketing and selling to consumers. From the video of the talk (linked below), at around 3:20
“… the way to do that, is not to talk about speeds… it’s not to talk about mbps and megahertz, it’s not to talk about why we’re better than Windows. The dairy industry tried for 20 years to convince you that milk was good for you… the sales were going like this [gestures a downward slope] and then they tried Got Milk and the sales have gone like this [gestures a rising slope]. Got Milk doesn’t even talk about the product, matter of fact it focuses on the absence of the product. But the best example of all… is Nike. Remember, Nike sells a commodity, they sell shoes. And yet when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company. In their ads, as you know, they don’t ever talk about the products, they don’t ever tell you about their air soles and why they’re better than Reebok’s air soles…”
