Apple.com - Looking Back to 1987
The domain apple.com went online 30 years ago on 19th February 1987. Registered for free, the web has fostered Apple’s growth and revenues of over 200 billion Euro.
We can see just how much Apple ‘the brand’ has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. The colourful rainbow logo was swapped for a polished monochrome alternative and from that a strong and ‘well loved’ brand has been developed. The Apple brand ‘personality’ denotes simplicity, innovation and product design with the consumer in mind… not to mention the sense of community Apple has built over the years!
So how did Apple develop the brand that many know and love today? After a bit of research, I found some very interesting comments on Wired…
“It's no coincidence that it was a marketing executive from Pepsi, John Sculley, who turned Apple into the biggest computer company in the world.”
Sculley said this to the Guardian newspaper in 1997… "People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company, It was the marketing company of the decade."
"Without the brand, Apple would be dead," he said. "Absolutely. Completely. The brand is all they've got. The power of their branding is all that keeps them alive. It's got nothing to do with products."
Apple is one of the most valuable companies today. However, profits have decreased for the first time in 15 years due to lower IPhone sales as a result of fierce competition from other manufacturers such as Samsung and Google.
Is branding the huge contributor to Apple’s success as it once was or are consumers ‘shopping around’ and looking for cheaper alternatives that provide the same level of quality? Brand agnosticism is a ‘thing’ and it can be said that there are a certain kind of people who do not buy simply for the brand. Apple is in a unique position as they have done the near impossible… cultivated a long-term emotional connection with their customers. That however cannot be said for every brand, or every product in every industry, sometimes people buy for the quality, craftsmanship, user interface, ease of use or cost effectiveness… not the brand.
When Renaissance came into existence 30 years ago, we were not thinking about the ‘brand’… at that time it was simply a name. As a distributor, we have always been more interested in developing other people’s brands, whether that’s the Vendors we represent or the Resellers we supply to.
Our passion has always been growing and building our partner’s business first, believing that if they prosper then so will we and that’s a strategy that hasn’t changed… what has changed in recent times is how we develop and support that growth.
In distribution, we have a unique position, seeing the market from several angles which gives us great insight. what we have seen over the last few years is the need for distribution to add more value to the supply chain.
One of our biggest initiatives over the past few years has been the development of a unique services offering available exclusively to our partners. We call it ‘Clearly Managed’
The challenge for may resellers is providing breadth and depth to their clients, the Cyber Security Market has grown exponentially in recent years and many resellers have found it difficult to be all things to all people; technical resources are expensive and keeping the technical skill sets updated is a perennial challenge.
We decided to create Clearly Managed in response to these challenges; In simple terms, we can now provide managed support services, in a seamless way, as part of the resellers services portfolio.
From our resellers perspective, it provides the ability to provide a wider, more effective service tailored to their specific requirements, complementing their existing support structures. Importantly, the services we provide are “white labelled” therefore maintaining their own brand, and not causing any confusion with their clients.
We see this approach becoming increasingly applicable, especially in the Irish marketplace and we look forward to supporting our resellers over the next 30 years!