“The Apple Marketing Philosophy: Empathy · Focus · Impute”, 1977-12 ():
We normally think of marketing in terms of forecasting, strategic and product planning, selling, advertising, merchandising and the like. While these functions are indeed the kernel of marketing, Apple believes there are more fundamental concepts which determine the success with which they are performed. Everything we do in the marketing department revolves around one or more of these concepts. The essence of Apple’s marketing philosophy is contained in just 3 words…empathy, focus, and impute.
Empathy—Understanding so intimate that the feelings, thoughts, and motives of one are readily comprehended by another. If we have empathy for our customers and dealers, we will truly understand their needs better than any other company. We will know how they feel about our products and about Apple, what thought process they go through before making a decision to buy, and what motivates their actions. Just ‘being sensitive’ is not enough to do an Apple marketing job…it takes an understanding of our customers, fellow employees, competitors, and our dealers…empathy.
Focus—A thorough and complete understanding of the marketplace always provides more opportunities than can or should be attacked. In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities, select from the remainder only those that we have the resources to do well, and concentrate our efforts on them. This process requires that we set priorities carefully, and that we discipline ourselves to religiously stick to our plans.
Impute—the process by which an impression of a product, company, or person is formed by mentally transferring the characteristics of the communicating media to the product, company, or person. In other words, people do judge a book by its cover, a company by its representatives, a product’s quality by the quality of its collateral materials, etc. Here are just a few examples of how Apple has used this concept…
We created the impression that Apple was a successful company by advertising like a successful company. We created the impression that the Apple II was a high quality product by producing high quality ads, brochures, manuals, and other collateral materials. We created the impression that Apple was a highly solid company by making and publicizing contracts with large, high credibility organizations like Dow Jones, Bell & Howell, and ITT. We created the impression of being an ‘industry leader’ by arranging for articles to be published on us in major magazines such as Business Week, Time, and Fortune.
The general impression of Apple Computer Inc (our image) is the combined result of everything the customer sees, hears, or feels from Apple, not necessarily what Apple actually is! We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc. [but] 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.