Steve Jobs (17 page)

company that has invented a new technology called xerogra-

phy. Two years later, Xerox is born, and IBM has been kicking

itself ever since. It is ten years later. The late sixties. Digital

Equipment, DEC, and others invent the minicomputer. IBM

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dismisses the minicomputer as too small to do serious com-

puting and therefore unimportant to their business. DEC

grows to become a multihundred-million-dollar corpora-

tion, while IBM finally enters the minicomputer market. It

is now ten years later. The late seventies. In 1977, Apple, a

young, fledgling company on the West Coast, invents the

Apple II, the first personal computer as we know it today

[introduces the hero]. IBM dismisses the personal computer

as too small to do serious computing and unimportant to

their business [the villain overlooking the hero’s qualities].

The early eighties. In 1981, Apple II has become the world’s

most popular computer, and Apple has grown into a $300

million company, becoming the fastest-growing corporation

in American business history. With over fifty competitors

vying for a share, IBM enters the personal computer market

in November 1981, with the IBM PC. 1983. Apple and IBM

emerge as the industry’s strongest competitors, each selling

over $1 billion in personal computers in 1983 [David has

now matched Goliath]. The shakeout is in full swing. The

first major firm goes bankrupt, with others teetering on the

brink. It is now 1984. It appears IBM wants it all [the hero

is about to spring into action]. Apple is perceived to be the

only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers initially

welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM-dominated

and -controlled future. They are increasingly and desperately

turning back to Apple as the only force that will ensure their

future freedom
.1

The audience broke out into wild cheers as Jobs created a classic

showdown. Jobs played his best James Bond. Just as the villain

is about to destroy the world, Bond—or Jobs—enters the scene

and calmly saves the day. Ian Fleming would be proud.

The Hero’s Mission

The hero’s mission in a Steve Jobs presentation is not nec-

essarily to slay the bad guy, but to make our lives better. The

REVEAL THE CONQUERING HERO
77

introduction of the iPod on October 23, 2001, demonstrates this

subtle but important difference.

It helps to understand the state of the digital music industry

at the time. People were carrying portable CD players that looked

monstrous compared with today’s tiny iPods. The few existing

digital music players were big and clunky or simply not that use-

ful due to a small storage capacity that allowed only a few dozen

songs. Some products, such as the Nomad Jukebox, were based on

a 2.5-inch hard drive and, while portable, were heavy and were

painfully slow to transfer songs from a PC. Battery life was so short

that the devices were pretty much useless. Recognizing a problem

in need of a solution, Jobs entered as the conquering hero.

“Why music?” Jobs asked rhetorically.

“We love music. And it’s always good to do something you

love. More importantly, music is a part of everyone’s life. Music

has been around forever. It will always be around. This is not

a speculative market. And because it’s a part of everyone’s life,

it’s a very large target market all around the world. But interest-

ingly enough, in this whole new digital-music revolution, there

is no market leader. No one has found a recipe for digital music.

We found the recipe.”

Once Jobs whetted the audience’s appetite by announcing

that Apple had found the recipe, he had set the stage. His next

step would be to introduce the antagonist. He did so by taking

his audience on a tour of the current landscape of portable music

players. Jobs explained that if you wanted to listen to music on

the go, you could buy a CD player that held ten to fifteen songs,

a flash player, an MP3 player, or a hard-drive device such as the

Jukebox. “Let’s look at each one,” Jobs said.

A CD player costs about $75 and holds about ten to fifteen

songs on a CD. That’s about $5 a song. You can buy a flash

player for $150. It holds about ten to fifteen songs, or about

$10 a song. You can go buy an MP3 CD player that costs

$150, and you can burn up to 150 songs, so you get down to

a dollar a song. Or you can buy a hard-drive Jukebox player

for $300. It holds about one thousand songs and costs thirty

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cents a song. We studied all these, and that’s where we want

to be [points to “hard drive” category on slide]. We are intro-

ducing a product today that takes us exactly there, and that

product is called iPod.

With that, Jobs introduced the hero, the iPod. The iPod, he

said, is an MP3 music player that plays CD-quality music. “But

the biggest thing about iPod is that it holds a thousand songs.

This is a quantum leap because for most people, it’s their entire

music library. This is huge. How many times have you gone on

the road and realized you didn’t bring the CD you wanted to

listen to? But the coolest thing about iPod is your entire music

library fits in your pocket. This was never possible before.
”2
By reinforcing the fact that one’s entire music library could fit in a

pocket, Jobs reinforces the hero’s (iPod) most innovative quality,

reminding the audience that this was never possible until Apple

appeared to save the day.

After the iPod’s introduction, Knight-Ridder columnist Mike

Langberg wrote an article in which he pointed out that Creative

(the maker of the original Nomad Jukebox) saw the opportu-

nity in portable music players before Apple and unveiled a 6 GB

hard-drive player in September 2000; Apple followed with its

first iPod a year later. “But,” he noted, “Creative lacks Apple’s

not-so-secret weapon: founder, chairman, and chief evangelist,

Steve Jobs.
”3

”I’m a Mac.” “I’m a PC.”

The “Get a Mac” advertising campaign kicked off in 2006 and

quickly became one of the most celebrated and recognizable

television campaigns in recent corporate history. Comedian

John Hodgman plays “the PC,” while actor Justin Long plays the

“Mac guy.” Both are standing against a stark white background,

and the ads typically revolve around a story line in which the

PC character is stuffy, slow, and frustrated, whereas the Mac has

a friendly, easygoing personality. The ads play out the villain

(PC) and hero (Mac) plot in thirty-second vignettes.

REVEAL THE CONQUERING HERO
79

In one early ad (Angel/Devil), the Mac character gives PC an

iPhoto book. An “angel” and a “devil” appear (the PC character

dressed in a white suit and a red suit). The angel encourages PC

to compliment Mac, while the devil prods PC to rip the book in

half. The metaphor is clear. I’m a Mac/I’m a PC could be titled

“I’m the good guy/I’m the bad guy.
”4

Once the hero is established, the benefit must be made clear.

The one question that matters to people—Why should I care?—

must be answered immediately. In an ad titled Out of the Box,

both characters pop out of boxes. The conversation goes like

this:

MAC: Ready to get started?

PC: Not quite. I’ve got a lot to do. What’s your big plan?

MAC: Maybe make a home movie, create a website, try out my

built-in camera. I can do it all right out of the box. What

about you?

PC: First, I’ve got to download those new drivers, I have to erase

the trial software that came on my hard drive, and I’ve got a

lot of manuals to read.

MAC: Sounds like you’ve got a lot of stuff to do before you

do any stuff. I’m going to get started, because I’m kind of

excited. Let me know when you’re ready. [Jumps out of box]

PC: Actually, the rest of me is in some other boxes. I’ll meet up

with you later.

Some observers have criticized Apple’s campaign, saying it

smacked of smug superiority. Whether you like the ads or hate

them, there is no question they are effective, if only to keep

people talking about Apple. In fact, the ads were so success-

ful that Microsoft countered with an ad campaign of its own

showing famous and not-so-famous people in all walks of life

proudly proclaiming, “I’m a PC.” But Apple had landed the first

punch, painting the PC as nerdy and Apple as the cool kid you

really want to be like. The Microsoft ads are fun to watch but

lack the emotional punch of Apple’s ads, for one reason—there’s

no villain.

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Problem and Solution in Thirty Seconds

With more than ten thousand applications available for the

iPhone, the App Store has been a resounding success for Apple.

The company features some individual apps in television and

print ads for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The television ads

are effective because in thirty seconds they paint a picture of a

problem and offer a solution.

For example, in one ad for an app called Shazam, a narrator

says, “You know when you don’t know what song is playing and

it’s driving you crazy? [introduces problem] With the Shazam

app, you just hold up your iPhone to the song, and within sec-

onds you will know who sings it and how to get it.
”5
The taglines are always the same: “That’s the iPhone. Solving life’s dilemmas

one app at a time.”

In thirty seconds, the commercials succeed in raising a prob-

lem and solving those problems one app at a time. The ads

prove that establishing problems and offering solutions need

not be time consuming. Don’t spend too much time getting to

the punch line.

Jobs Doesn’t Sell Computers;

He Sells an Experience

After identifying the villain and introducing the hero, the next

step in the Apple narrative is to show how the hero clearly offers

the victim—the consumer—an escape from the villain’s grip.

The solution must be simple and free of jargon. Visit the Apple

site, for instance, and you will find the top reasons “why you’ll

love a Mac.
”6 T
he list includes specific benefits and largely avoids complicated technical language. As a case in point, instead of

saying that a MacBook Pro comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4

GHz, 2 GB, 1,066 MHz, DDR3 SDRAM, and a 250 GB Serial ATA

5,400 rpm, the site lists direct benefits to the customer: “It’s gor-

geous inside and out; it does what a PC does, only better; it has

the world’s most advanced operating system, and then some; it’s

a pleasure to buy and own.” You see, your target customers are

REVEAL THE CONQUERING HERO
81

not buying a 2.4 GHz multicore processor. They are buying the

experience
the processor provides.

Unlike his competitors, Jobs largely avoids mind-numbing

data, stats, and jargon in his presentations. During Macworld

2006, Jobs added his famous “One more thing” signature phrase

near the end of the presentation. The one more thing turned

out to be the new MacBook Pro with an Intel Core 2 micropro-

cessor, marking the first Intel chips in Mac notebooks. Jobs took

a few minutes to clearly outline the problem and introduce the

hero’s tangible benefits, in plain and simple language.

“There’s been this pesky little problem in the PowerBooks,”

Jobs said.

“It’s not a secret that we’ve been trying to shoehorn a G5

[IBM microprocessor] into the PowerBook and have been unable

to do so because of its power consumption. It’s unrealistic in

such a small package. We’ve done everything possible engineer-

ingwise. We’ve consulted every possible higher authority [shows

a slide with a photograph of the pope, drawing a huge laugh].”

Replacing the existing microprocessor with an Intel Core

Duo, Jobs explained, yielded much better performance in a

smaller package.

Today we are introducing a new notebook computer we are

calling the MacBook Pro. It has an Intel Core Duo chip in it,

the same as we’re putting in the new iMac, which means there

will be dual processors in every MacBook Pro. What does this

yield? It’s four to five times faster than the PowerBookG4.

These things are screamers . . . The new MacBook Pro is the

fastest Mac notebook ever. It’s also the thinnest. It’s got some

amazing new features. It has a 15.4-inch wide-screen display

that is as bright as our cinema displays. It’s a gorgeous dis-

play. It’s got an iSight camera built in. Now you can have

videoconferencing right out of the box on the go. It’s great.

Videoconferencing to go. This is heave
n.7

You may or may not agree that a portable webcam is “heaven,”

but Jobs knows his audience and voices what is, to those pres-

ent, a serious problem in need of a solution.