Ken Segall has a long history with Apple. He worked with Steve Jobs for over 14-years as the creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day. Segall is the guy who came up with the ‘Think Different’ campaign, literally put the ‘i’ in iMac, and he’s even got his own book about Steve Jobs.
When it comes to Apple, Ken knows what he’s talking about, and right now, he’s not happy at all with how Apple’s been approaching their ads. In Ken’s opinion, Apple is getting beat up by Samsung because Samsung is producing great ads, and Apple isn’t.
In a recent blog post, Ken discussed what made Apple so successful. While some Apple detractors believe that Apple was only successful because of its marketing, Ken says a reasonably intelligent person can’t possibly believe that. Still, marketing helps, and lately Apple’s marketing hasn’t been as great as it was in past years.
“While you can still argue that Macs and i-devices have a ton of appeal, you can’t argue that Apple is still untouchable when it comes to advertising.
The fact is, it is being touched — often and effectively — by none other than Samsung. The big surprise is that Samsung’s message has proven to be tremendously potent. The company continues to bash away at Apple, delivering ads that are well produced, well written and seem to be striking a nerve.”
There are two reasons why Samsung’s ads have been effective lately. First, Samsung is spending a ton of money on them. They’re spending more than Apple, HP, Dell and even Coca-Cola to get it’s message out.
Second, Samsung’s ads are actually good. They’re well written and produced. Samsung is scoring big points with people-based ads, while Apple has been coasting with its traditional product-based ads. Apple needs to comeback with a great campaign to right this ship, and Ken says that’s what he believes will happen.
To read more on Segall’s thoughts on Apple’s current marketing problems, head over to Ken’s blog to get the full run down.
Source: Ken Segall
