Apple Promotional Strategy

It is quite obvious from the case that Apple is facing many obstacles. It has way more competitors today than it had two or three decades back. Part of it has to with the highly globalized environment that companies are operating in these days. Another major obstacle is the technological environment which is rapidly changing compared to the one that Apple experienced when it first emerged on the global scene. But the most important of it all seems to be a mental thing. It appears that Apple, over a period of time, developed a rigid mental model that related success of Apple with sheer innovation. This same mental model has lead to demise of many companies in the past, Xerox Corporation being the prime example of that.

When they introduce Apple II, people started to recognize their presence and they started to receive orders.

Apple has become public knowledge CEO Steve Jobs announced that the company provided by Free-scale in its Macintosh computers (formerly: Motorola) and IBM would make a transition from PowerPC to Intel microprocessors use, designed and developed by a chief supplier of processors for most of Apple's competitors.

Jay Matheson is apple college representative and is also attending Lynn to earn his doctorate degree. He also spoke about the important of being able to set yourself apart from everyone else. The quote he said that stuck out to me was powerful personal brand will set you apart from the crowd. He spoke about how brands are not the label or product. He said that the brand is not what they say it is which is from the company’s standpoint and then said what the customers say is what they say it is. The last thing that I toke from what he said was the top five brands that impacted us are apple, Starbucks, Wikipedia, Google, and Facebook.

Procter & Gamble has strong brands to its name. The company boasts 24 billion dollar brands. It also claims 50 leadership brands that contribute 90% to its overall sales and profit.

their customers are liking. In this situation Apple Inc. is very prepared to supply their customers.

Houpt, S. and Simon.:"Apple cracks Interbrand’s best global brands top 10 list". Globe and Mail (Canada),

Johnson explains how his delay time from getting news about anything related to the company Apple went from months to seconds. The momentum was due to multiple platforms of peers creating new sources of Apple information distribution. The Macworld magazine was Johnson’s first connection to Apple news as it was “Combining product reviews, valuable tips, and analysis of the latest news developments, every month Macworld magazine provides you with what you need to know about the universe of Apple products.” (Macworld Magazine). Purchasing this magazine was Johnson’s way to access Apple news during his college years. Since Macworld was published monthly, what one read in the latest issue was already old news for the company. The lag time of publication and production accounted for the articles not being viewed until a few months down the line. Luckily, for Johnson and other Macintosh enthusiasts, a commercial internet provider, CompuServe, combined the internet and journalism to provide Apple updates every week. To further decrease the delay time, the creation of MacInTouch, another web platform, updated its technology news daily. Finally, Apple itself created their own website where articles were posted instantly as soon as they were written (Johnson, pg. 79-84). Apple now had breaking news instead of month-old news.

Procter & Gamble fell 15 positions from rank 6 in 2010 to rank 21 in 2016. Toyota motors that in 2010 was considered one of the top 10 companies is barely making the top 20 in 2016 being on position 28th because “the world’s top-selling automaker has in recent years battled natural disasters such as Japan’s 2011 tsunami, along with a string of recalls over issues such as unintended acceleration”. The company has an increase in stock price from 2010 to 2016 year, while recently reported negative returns (see Exhibit 3). The premiere investment bank and financial services firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc is still on the 50 World’s Most Admired Companies although it fell from rank 8 in 2010 to rank 23 in 2016. The company that encounter the biggest fall from rank 9 in 2010 to rank 42 in 2016 is Walmart. The Walmart is not a company with the highest reputation. Walmart did not score high on social responsibilities and quality of products (see Exhibit 4). The last company that made the top 10 in 2010 and is ranked 15 in 2016 is Coca Cola. Facing concerns over national obesity rates and the safety of artificial sweeteners, Coca-Cola spent $1.25 billion for a 10% stake in Keurig Green Mountain Coffee and $2.15 billion for a stake in energy drink maker Monster Beverage.

Some of the world’s most well-known brands come from Procter & Gamble. Indeed, as the world's largest consumer goods company that markets more than 300 brands globally in over 180 countries, P&G positioned itself as the leader in its market.

Firms that take the initiative to be proactive in giving back to their communities, volunteering, and caring about the environment are considered some of the top brands. The media pays close attention to companies that have popular brands because they are waiting for them to make a smart or poor choice to publicly advertise. The reputation of the brand is always on the line unless smart and strategic choices are made by the firm to enhance the brand image by positioning it well in the eyes of consumers. No caring human being likes to wear a real animal fur coat regardless of the brand. Making sure that products are eco and environmentally friendly while perhaps using fewer resources helps consumers feel good about the product they purchase from a certain brand.

However this was merely the beginning, which was soon followed by more events which further pushed apple over the edge.

In return, they have a strong financial backing, brand reputation, strong marketing and advertising teams. Apple plans to take these strengths and prosper off of them. Taking the amount of brand awareness they have built along with their benefit of retail stores the company can plan to use their strong marketing and advertising teams to launch a new product.

Branding is all about differentiation. Stephen King said; “A product is something made in a factory; a brand is something bought by a consumer. A product can be copied by a competitor; a brand is unique. A product can be quickly outdated; a brand is timeless.” This is the very root of why companies should brand their products. Brand equity is a massive asset to the company. It is relatively easy for a company to replicate another company’s physical assets as well as their logo and packaging etc. However it is the brand equity that cannot be replicated. This is where the competitive advantage stems from. A perfect example of this is Pepsi and coca Cola. In a blind taste test, the result indicated that the majority of Americans, in fact, favour Pepsi over Coca Cola. Coca Cola is the number 6 brand in the world and Pepsi doesn’t even reach the top 50. Coca Cola’s huge success is entirely to do with its effective branding which has lead to massive brand equity and it’s bottom line results speak for themselves.

Brand Share: In terms of brand share by value Kalyan Jewellers has shown steady increment from 2010. The graphs is shown below: