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Total tangent, but this really jumped out at me: > The secrecy that’s so deeply embedded in the organization facilitates their distribution strategy- can you i

Total tangent, but this really jumped out at me: > The secrecy that’s so deeply embedded in the organization facilitates their distribution strategy- can you imagine building your company culture around your marketing strategy? That’s what Apple’s done, though it’s not often talked about. I've never thought about Apple that way at all. To me Apple was always about the product first, and the secrecy and marketing was built around that. They don't announce a product until it's ready to ship because it's stupid to talk about something that's not finished yet (unless you're Microsoft and you need to do it to keep your long-term enterprise customers on the hook). Jobs greatest strength may arguably have been as a pitchman, but wasn't his greatest passion the product itself? At the very least, Apple could not hire a retain the level of technical talent they have had based on being marketing first.

jonnathanson 13y ago
I don't think Apple's success can be isolated cleanly to one pivotal variable. Steve Jobs was obsessed with product and obsessed with product marketing. Apple doesn't see product and product marketing as two wholly distinct functions, either. Most companies do -- and the fact that Apple doesn't is, in itself, a corporate strength. People could probably quibble for days about whether Apple is a "marketing first" company, or what that phrase actually means. I think it's more apropos to say that Apple is a company that understands both product and marketing. And it understands the "full stack" of marketing in a way most tech companies do not. Apple is phenomenal at brand marketing, for instance -- not just MarCom, or advertising, or conversion optimization. A lot of its competitors relegate marketing to a series of discrete, necessary-but-evil functions, and not a pillar of corporate culture.
- dasil003 13y ago
  That's fair, I don't think you can tease apart the product and the marketing. But the reason I find the quote strange is that the marketing depends on the product, not the other way around.
  - jonnathanson 13y ago
    Sure, but it depends on how you define marketing. In some respects, Apple views marketing more along the lines of the CPG model than the typical tech model. It's a model in which a fair amount of product itself falls under the rubric of marketing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_management

jonnathanson 13y ago

I don't think Apple's success can be isolated cleanly to one pivotal variable. Steve Jobs was obsessed with product and obsessed with product marketing. Apple doesn't see product and product marketing as two wholly distinct functions, either. Most companies do -- and the fact that Apple doesn't is, in itself, a corporate strength. People could probably quibble for days about whether Apple is a "marketing first" company, or what that phrase actually means. I think it's more apropos to say that Apple is a company that understands both product and marketing. And it understands the "full stack" of marketing in a way most tech companies do not. Apple is phenomenal at brand marketing, for instance -- not just MarCom, or advertising, or conversion optimization. A lot of its competitors relegate marketing to a series of discrete, necessary-but-evil functions, and not a pillar of corporate culture.

dasil003 13y ago
That's fair, I don't think you can tease apart the product and the marketing. But the reason I find the quote strange is that the marketing depends on the product, not the other way around.
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  Sure, but it depends on how you define marketing. In some respects, Apple views marketing more along the lines of the CPG model than the typical tech model. It's a model in which a fair amount of product itself falls under the rubric of marketing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_management