My final essay

Apple advertisements strategies in persuading people to buy their products.

What makes it so attractive to buy products from Apple Inc? This is an interesting question since Apple is developing new technology incredibly fast and their products keep improving in design and features. Do people buy their products just because of the sleek and improved designs or do they actually buy the electronics for what they’re able to do with it? When it comes to the topic of selling products most efficiently, most of us will readily agree that advertising is the best option to get people’s attention. We should ask ourselves: is Apple advertisement great or do they sometimes send the wrong message? Advertisement comes in many forms, but what makes the Apple Inc. advertisements so good, that people actually go down to the store and buy their product? Could it be the way they put humor into certain commercials or is it the design they put up on the billboards that attracts people towards their products? Humor is an aspect that people enjoy in commercials or just in general and billboards are shown all over the big cities, so people can’t really miss looking at these ad campaigns printed on the billboards.

In the past two decades Apple advertisements have become well known and are designed to reflect a business plan of marketing their products to creative individuals. Their most significant ad campaigns include the Super Bowl commercial from 1984, which introduces the Macintosh and the Think Different campaign (slogan) from the 1990s and the iPod commercials, which started introducing the more advanced MP3-players that Apple created in 2000. Since Apple created the Macintosh Super Bowl commercial in 1984, it has maintained a style of visual art in many more famous ad campaigns. Later in the 1990s they developed advertisements including famous social figures, such as artist John Lennon and social activist Mahatma Gandhi in the Think Different campaign.

Do Apple campaign draw more attention by involving famous figures into the advertising process? Personally I think that it helps Apple in a way to get the customers attention, especially when the famous figure is very well known with a good reputation. Teenagers might look at their favorite celebrity representing a certain product that is showing on a billboard and the teens decide that this is a good reason for purchasing the product that is displayed.

Many people might buy Apple products because they are overwhelmed by their ad campaigns and the whole image that the company has created over the years. The reason for the public to be overwhelmed by their campaigns is due to the fact that the advertisements are spread everywhere and sometimes really largely displayed too. Teenagers are known to be vulnerable to hypes that are going on at school; advertisements can therefore persuade them more easily into buying whatever product they’re selling. So if everyone at school or in someone’s class buys iPod’s all of a sudden, it is more likely hat others will follow since they’d want to be part of something, in this case, the hype. Does this make teenagers an easy target for persuasion through advertisements by Apple? This could very likely be because as Apple may have figured out, if they get the younger generation to purchase their products, they will probably be more successful over the years to come. `So this is an example of people buying items because of the image behind it.

Personally, I look at what the product is able to do and how it’s improved in comparison to previous versions of it. Other people might buy a computer just because everybody else has one or simply because of the beautiful, high-tech design. Is Apple then tricking us in buying their products based on the look/design of it? That is a question every person has to answer individually, because everyone has a different reason to buy Apple’s creations. The design and look of the product might be a nice bonus to the creation you bought, but I believe that the features of the items are most important when considering purchasing something.

However not all people agree with the way Apple approaches things. According to Lev Grossman, who wrote the article How Apple Does It, doubts the way Apple approaches things. Grossman says that Apple does everything at the same time and this is all wrong. Grossman says: “Try to do everything at once and you won’t do anything well.” So basically he thinks that the company won’t function well just because they take on all the different sectors of technology. I do agree that Apple doesn’t make everything as good as it could be, like the iPhone 4 (which still has a few technical problems), however I disagree with the fact that companies can’t function well if handling multiple technological sectors. Apple indeed proved that they most certainly able to grow out to be a successful business by expanding their horizon by creating not only computer, but also phones, iPod’s and various other accessories. This turned out to be a very smart decision, since it’s nowadays unlikely to find a person, who hasn’t heard from iPod’s or the iPhone.