The title should give you some idea about what the post is about. And before you flame me, realize that I know there are a great number of dedicated Apple Bloggers out there. The concept driving this post is something that has been tickling the back of my brain for a week now: the lack of and silence from bloggers who work directly for Apple.
John Moore of Brand Autopsy comments on Guy Kawasaki, the Evangelists’ Evangelist, stating that he is tired of defending Apple. [here]
Apple has micromanged their branding and corporate message to such a degree that they cannot, will not, tolerate ANY deviation from the company line. By anyone. Including the hordes of excited, motivated, and deicated Apple Fanatics.
Apple, currently you have the cool factor on your side. I have become a victim of your message: I LUST for (not want, not desire, but LUST for) a Powerbook.
However, as lust is want to do, it may cool when the sun rises and all is exposed in the true light.
So Apple, how do you want your fanatics to speak of you? As the company with the cool tech who puts the chill into even the most firebrand brand evangelist? Or the company that encourages, motivates and invigorates the discussion and dissemination by their brand evangelists, no matter who they are?
If you work at Apple and you are reading this, which answer do you see coming out of the Marketing Department?
2005-04-01 — 18:18
Stephen, the whole Apple culture works against blogging. There are a tremendous number of very bright people at Apple who could have great blogs that would provide Apple with a tremendous amount of feedback from their customers. However, it won’t happen.
Apple is not about creating a dialogue with customers to understand their needs. Apple is all about producing the products that Apple wants to produce. As I heard one executive say, “customers don’t know what to buy, we have to tell them what to buy.”
That in turn leads to a culture that obsesses over customer messaging. In some situations, each word that a customer might read or hear is strictly controlled. The preference is to say nothing if anything might be misinterpreted.
Of course that doesn’t mean that Apple products aren’t great. I love my Macs, but I think they could be better if the company were more open and listened to their customers a little more.
You might want to try my ApplePeels blog for an in depth look at Apple. It’s therapy for me as an ex-Apple person transitioning from within the reality distortion field to the normal world, where few know or care what a MacWorld is. I get feedback from a number of Apple employees that things have not changed since I left.
The good news for me is Linux is making tremendous progress, so maybe I won’t always have to depend on a company which takes most of its users for granted.
2005-04-01 — 18:18
Apple is not about creating a dialogue with customers to understand their needs. Apple is all about producing the products that Apple wants to produce. As I heard one executive say, “customers don’t know what to buy, we have to tell them what to buy.”That in turn leads to a culture that obsesses over customer messaging. In some situations, each word that a customer might read or hear is strictly controlled. The preference is to say nothing if anything might be misinterpreted.Of course that doesn’t mean that Apple products aren’t great. I love my Macs, but I think they could be better if the company were more open and listened to their customers a little more.You might want to try my ApplePeels blog for an in depth look at Apple. It’s therapy for me as an ex-Apple person transitioning from within the reality distortion field to the normal world, where few know or care what a MacWorld is. I get feedback from a number of Apple employees that things have not changed since I left.The good news for me is Linux is making tremendous progress, so maybe I won’t always have to depend on a company which takes most of its users for granted.