Taking a Big Bite of Apple

Sorry about the recent lack of blog, dear reader. Simon and I have started working on the Apple account and this has taken up all my brain-space. Even though we’re both consumers of the brand, it’s an interesting challenge to get under the skin of what’s right for it creatively.

Apple’s creative philosophy, as articulated all over the walls at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, is ‘simplify,, simplify, simplify’. Now this, as I’m discovering, effectively summarises the challenge of picking up this revered brand in a number of ways.

It seems that Apple advertising is easy (sexy product shot and a clever line), there’s a lot of nuance within that and it’s bloody hard to get simplicity right.

As a copywriter, you’re often asked to cover off all possible marketing messages in a line. It’s a real skill to get straight to the heart of the proposition in a minimum number of words. I remember James Hilton, a Creative director at AKQA, telling me that writing copy for Nike was a matter of starting with a statement, halving the number of words, then halving it again. It’s similar with Apple. Typically it’s boiling down what’s brilliant about a product in 4 playful words or less. And those playful words must translate into 19 languages.

It’s a tough one for an art director too. Doing something fresh within a very tight visual framework is incredibly challenging. We know that a lot of the ideas we’re coming up with are wrong, but we’re following them through to their logical conclusion to figure out why and identify the bits that are right. It’s an iterative process and I feel that I’m sharpening my creative skills as I go.

After a few weeks on the brand, we hope that we’re feeling our way towards the essence of Apple in our work. I’m beginning to think that after a few hundred concepts we’ll enter a zen state where we’re getting it right with less of a struggle. I’ll keep you posted…

What if…Steve Jobs were British and Jonathan Ive American?

I love those comic book parallel world stories...

You know the kind of thing: “What if Wolverine was a cross-dresser?”, “What if Batman was in the Beatles? (Would they then be ‘the Battles’?)”, “What Doctor Doom had three legs and a pet octopus named Dave?”

Well, I thought on the train this morning, let’s apply that kind of alternative dimension thinking to Apple. What would happen if Steve Jobs were a Brit? And, equally intriguing – what if Jonathan Ive were a yank? Here are my conclusions…

The iconic Apple design would be a little…different

If you look at US product design – say Ford sportscars, the Xbox 360 or (hoho) the Zune – it’s very clear that the aesthetic, to put it politely, doesn’t quite have the same minimalist chic appeal as the current Apple product line. It’s all about bulk and muscle. So let us imagine a Jonathan Ive born in Chattanooga, rather than Chingford. First of all, I expect his name would be Jon-Bob Ive. I also suspect that his design for the new MacBooks would look like this:

Eyecatching, certainly. Elegant? As an elephant doing the fandango on crystal meth...

And those keynotes wouldn’t be quite the same

You can say what you like about us Brits, but you could never accuse us of being overly cocky. We don’t really do the whole ‘I’m great and my product is fuckin’ fantastic!’ thing. In fact, we’d rather die than ‘big ourselves up’. Think Hugh Grant in ‘Micky Blue Eyes’ (or any of his other films). It isn’t a cliché – it’s ALL True. So Sir Steven Jobs the Englishman wouldn’t do the ‘just one more thing’ part of his keynote in the same way. You’d be expecting an anti-climax and then, by god, you’d get one. Rather than “"Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is...", Sir Steven would tell us: “Er…we’ve got this product and it’s quite good I suppose. It’s…erm..a phone and it does other things too. And here it – er – is…”

The conclusion

Business disaster. Utter ruin. We’d live in a world where the Zune is the MP3 player to be seen with and Dell PCs are cutting edge design. A grim vision I know – thank god it’s only in my imagination…