For the tenth consecutive year, the CMO Survey voted Apple the overall winner of the CMO Survey Award for Marketing Excellence. This distinction is by no means a unique accolade for a company that has been named the “world’s most admired company” yet again by Fortune, based on its annual survey that aggregated 2018 responses from 680 executives across 50 industries.
That history repeats itself with respect to Apple’s marketing excellence and brand dominance comes as no surprise. In 2012, Christine Moorman, Director of The CMO Survey and Senior Professor of Business Administration at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, noted Apple’s three-point marketing philosophy as the foundation for excellence that has guided the company for 40 years.
In 1977, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak introduced investor Mike Markkula into the business as they balanced rocketing Apple I sales with capital investment needed to unleash next-generation product development on the Apple II. In addition to infusing $250,000 into the company and signing on as a third partner, Markkula penned a three-point call-to-action that remains at the heart of Apple’s unparalleled success.
- Empathy. Apple should strive for an "intimate" connection with customers' feelings. "We will truly understand their needs better than any other company," Markkula wrote.
- Focus. To be successful, Apple should center its efforts on accomplishing its main goals, and eliminate all the “unimportant opportunities.”
- Impute. Apple should be constantly aware that companies and their products will be judged by the signals they convey. “People DO judge a book by its cover,” Markkula wrote. “We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; 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.”
The ideology has not failed Apple in the ensuing four decades as the company maintains its position as the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of more than $851 billion. Apple’s commitment to empathy, focus, and impute are sure to garner many more years of awards and, more importantly, consumer loyalty that is hard to match.