The Marketing Legacy of Steve Jobs

The media has been saturated the last couple days with memories of Steve Jobs.

Here’s mine — it lasted about two seconds.  It was the late 1980s, and I was at a press conference. All I remember was he was speaking. I don’t know what the press conference was about, or who I was freelancing for at the time.

For a brief moment, I caught his eye. I remember a distinct impression that I got as he looked back into my eyes. It was something I’ve never seen or experienced before or since.

He had a smile on his face — a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. The look in his eye said to me, “Just watch what we’re going to do!”

What he did, of course, was take an impossible concept — a warm and connected digital device, the Macintosh — and use it to lead Apple to becoming the world’s most valuable company, in hard and cold dollar terms. With a string of similar products: the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.

And a company culture that had all of the irresistibly magnetic qualities of a cult.

At another time, he told a reporter that his goal was to “put a ding in the universe.”

Well done, my two-second friend. You definitely accomplished your goal.

How he did that, what he did, and how it has affected us -- those are what fascinate me the most.

I am certainly looking to find those things out. I don’t pretend to know that much about them yet.  I have a few clues, though, and I’d like to share them with you here today.

The first clue is that he was probably more fluent in the language (and non-verbal experience) of emotion than anyone else in Silicon Valley.

He didn’t talk in bits and bytes. He talked in you and me.

Here is what he said during his famous Stanford commencement speech in 2005:

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

Interesting stuff. Really profound, but easy to understand.

Can you imagine any number of smartest-guy-in-the-room Silicon Valley honchos even lip-synching the words?

I can’t.  It takes an emotional genius to say something that simple and yet that universally connecting.

The second clue is that he didn’t consider customers a necessary evil or an annoyance to be tolerated. He knew that they were the lifeblood of his business.

A lot has been said about how he didn’t listen to customers, he told them what they wanted. That he destroyed entire segments of the industry -- desktop computing, the use of the floppy disk, even the use of the CD drive in the latest MacAir -- out of his own visionary arrogance.

But it may not have been that simple.

Or even that way at all.

Yesterday I heard Netscape pioneer Marc Andreesson talking on Charlie Rose’s interview show.

Andreesson said Jobs was frequently seen in the evening at the Apple store in Palo Alto, talking to customers, asking them about their experience with the products.

Of course, this seems just like Jobs.

But remember, he was CEO of the corporation that kept playing tag with Exxon-Mobil to be the most valuable corporation in the world by market capitalization, earlier this year.

So can you imagine Rex Tillerson going down to the local Mobil station to ask customers how they liked the gas?

(Nothing against Tillerson. I don't know anything about him and in fact had never heard of him until I just Googled him a few seconds ago. And he looks like a very civic-minded and engaged person, outside his job as Exxon-Mobil CEO. But as I stare at his corporate photo on the company site, I have a hard time imagining him mixing it up with refueling motorists.)

The third is how high a priority Steve Jobs placed on aesthetics... and how he, as best I can figure out, not having any inside information, refused to compromise.

When I made the switch from Windows to Mac a little over a year ago, I found I actually looked forward to working on it and looking at the screen. It was like the difference between driving a Camry and driving a BMW. Both get you where you’re going... but one is really fun along the way.

Aesthetics and user experience. Brian McLeod, My partner in Fast Effective Copy, is a Mac-maniac from way back.

Look at this video he did for us and you can see the impact Steve Jobs’ sense of aesthetics has on his work.

It’s no coincidence that every film coming out of Pixar, the animation studio Jobs created, was extraordinarily profitable in the marketplace.

I know a number of my Mac-maniac friends felt they had some kind of personal connection to Steve. I didn’t and I don’t. I didn’t know the guy. I had all of two seconds of actual personal connection with him.

But I feel a warm connection in spirit to who the man was—and what he stood for.

And that’s good enough for me.

I’m sorry we lost him on Wednesday and I’m grateful for what he brought to us while he was here.

David Garfinkel

Co-founder, Fast Effective Copy

Comments

[Michael Senoff]

Great post. You readers should watch the TED Jobs Standfor Speech At this link below.

http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

[David Garfinkel]

Hey, thanks Michael.

I appreciate the suggestion!

[LoudMac]

I remember working through the days of "beleaguered computer maker, Apple..." painfully well.

So, there is some smug sense of satisfaction in knowing that Steve Jobs goes out with Apple being the triumphant business success story that it is.

You were right, Steve. We ALL were.

Thank you.

Great post, Jedi.

[John Carlton]

Excellent insight, Garf. I really, really, really didn't think his death would affect me like this. I'm not in a tailspin or anything, but I AM in my 2nd day of thinking more deeply about life... and how much Jobs was a part of it for the last few decades in my niche. I hated Macs at first, out of a sense of "Oh, that arty-farty Apple stuff"... and stuck with PCs until forced away by their sheer clunkiness (and the horrible customer service -- first Gateway, then Dell just couldn't handle the simplest problems I had... and, with PCs, I had a LOT of problems).

I'm now on an iMac, and what a freakin' joy it is. Also my iPhone, iPad, and all the gizmo's and wonders I'm just getting into.

I think we'll be reconsidering Jobs place in the universe for some time to come. Product-wise, that's easy. As you've pointed out here, there are other elements that border on the spiritual that will take a little longer to sort out (especially as our culture remains cynical about everything...)...

Carlton

[Kevin Rogers]

Excellent post, David. Like many others, I feel like I'm just getting to know him today. Thanks for sharing your thoughtful insights and brief, but meaningful, encounter with us.

[PC]

Thanks for sharing your story, David. I didn't know Steve Jobs, personally, either, but the thing that makes him a revolutionary in my world is that he focused on creating products that helped to amplify the customer, not his company. This is reflected in his hiring style, too. One of the most insightful quotes of his I heard was, "Other companies hire people so they can tell them what to do. We hire people so they can tell US what to do." His philosophy was that greatness could and should come from anyone, anywhere and he created environments and companies and products that gave that philosophy vibrant, beautiful and effective ways to come to life and thrive. Back to the work you do, I think the best copy works the same way. This customer centered point of view is a big part of why I have admired your work for so many years. Thanks again.

[David Garfinkel]

Brian,

Thanks for the comment. You, more than anyone else I know, have embodied the spirit, work ethic, mindset and "insane genius" (a phrase I saw in a mainstream newspaper headline) of Steve more than anyone else I know.

It has influenced me A LOT.

[David Garfinkel]

Thanks, Kev.

I don't mean to get all Scriptural on you, but somehow I think you're the one person I could pull this off on and get away with it:

"By his works ye shall know him."

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

(And to all you Bible scholars out there, yes, I know that I changed the quote ever so slightly...)

Actually, it's by much more than his works with Jobs. He really did create a watershed moment in history in many ways and many dimensions, in my opinion.

[David Garfinkel]

John, thanks for the thoughts. My story is eerily the same. I bought Sony PCs-two of 'em, a desktop and a laptop-in 2005, because it was "the closest thing to a Mac I could get without getting a Mac."

When Vaio Desktop died for the third time, a year ago last August, it was Mac time. I love it, too.

Don't have my iPhone or iPad yet but I will. One trip through the knothole at a time.

I agree with you about reconsidering and I'm going to put a longer comment to your excellent post about Jobs.

Everyone else, you've got to see what Carlton wrote:

http://goo.gl/vyDOY

[David Garfinkel]

Thanks, PC. I appreciate everything you said. Wow.

[Peter]

Gee--what was it that made me to buy that Mac back in '87?

Something about it just spoke to me, and it felt right, right down to the bottom of my empty pocketbook.
I had just quit my job of 10 plus years. Two weeks before Christmas. three mouths to feed at home, and I just added a whopping twenty grand of Mac debt to my aching back. wow, talk about some sleepless nights...

But the best part was, I wouldn't ever have to learn a single line of code to start it. Just power up and start working!
I loved the seamless part of going right to work on my projects and not have to bother with some directory or whatever those IBM things required.
AND this thing had fonts! scalable ones at that. proportional spacing and a bunch of other tricks. COOL stuff, man.
Which just amazed me, because I had run a typography/design studio for years and their state of the art had nothing on this little Mac with a miniscule screen.
But I loved hunching over to peer into it every day as my little home spawned business grew and grew, on the outpouring of that little workhorse. now, I could write AND design it the way it HAD to look to hit those hot buttons.
That ugly little Mac was a mule team and a half, doing what a so called racehorse of advanced typography could do, in a fraction of the time, at a tiny fraction of the investment.
It almost fit in a shoe box, and its conventional competitor took up most of a room in the Fisher building where I once worked.
Quite honestly, I almost peed in my pants with the delight of what I was now doing with that thing on my desktop.

I'm on my sixth one now, I think, and though there times I've wanted to ashcan the darn thing, I bottom line love it and wouldn't dream of owning anything else.

Steve, you really had it down.

God Bless.

Peter Aristedes

[Tim Clarke]

Thank you David for thoose enlighting comments about Steve Jobs. I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of Steve contribution to the world of computer. My first encounter to apple products was in 1997 as a Sears sales associate selling Macintosh computers and software. It was first hand experience to be able to assist customers select the great features and benifits of Apple products. Thank you againg for remembering Steve Jobs.

[David Garfinkel]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the detailed and fascinating memory.

It look me a lot longer to come around to the Mac, but I'm writing this on my iMac and would never go back!

David

[David Garfinkel]

Tim,

I agree... he made such a vastly important contribution. His vision of what could be, combined with his stubbornness and his sense of fun, has really changed the world of the technology permanently and for the better.

[Peter]

David,
thank you for the great story about Steve Jobs. And welcome to the Mac family; hope you're having fun!
Peter