Love 'em or hate 'em, in the marketing profession there aren't many people who don't—at very minimum—revere what Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. have done with that brand over the last decade. I like to recall the days of my youth (before the iMac) when PC's reigned, the Pentium 1 processor was the cat's meow and 1 gigabyte of memory was considered grandiose. I also recall that Apple computers were irreverently and almost universally referred to as "Mac'n-trash."

I'm not sure when they officially shed that moniker, but today Apple Inc. stands as the golden standard in brand excellence. Everything from product beautification, software design, product integration, multi-media innovation to Apple's ad campaigns, packing and in-store experience is elegant and downright impressive. (Which is also why all the haters of the world joyously jumped on the anti-apple bandwagon when the iPhone 4 experienced reception problems.)

I stumbled upon the above 1998 video of a much younger Steve Jobs newly re-hired at Apple (he was ousted in 1987) describing his own brand philosophy and basically laying out the blueprint for how within 10 years Apple would become one of the greatest brands of all time. The campaign he introduces in this early video "Think Different," is often credited for Apple's turnaround. Anyone slightly interested in marketing or who shares a love for what Apple has done, do watch...

Then & Now...

A collection of the entire Apple vs. PC campaign since 2006 (interestingly, this campaign appears to be 'over' - which leaves us naturally wondering, what's next??)