The Second Coming of Steve Jobs - Alan Deutschman [98]
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IN SEPTEMBER, Steve began taking decisive action. Gil had cut the number of research and development projects from 350 to 50. Steve cut it from 50 to about 10. Instead of hoping for some stunning technical breakthrough that would save the company, Steve looked instead at improving Apple’s advertising and restoring its cool hip image. He invited three ad agencies to pitch for Apple’s business, including Chiat/Day, which had created the famous “1984” television commercial during Steve’s first run at Apple.
Chiat/Day still had the same creative director from the “1984” campaign, Lee Clow, who came to Cupertino and proposed a new slogan: “Think Different.”
That’s not grammatical, thought Jim Oliver as he sat there taking notes for Steve. But no one in the room had the guts to say so.
Lee Clow said that the comeback of Harley-Davidson motorcycles was a good model for Apple to emulate. Harley’s advertising convinced people that they could feel its renegade spirit even if they were investment bankers rather than Hell’s Angels. It rehabilitated a counterculture icon for the baby boomers who had grown up and sold out.
That’s exactly what Apple needed to do.
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APPLE’S NEW advertising campaign came together quickly.
Steve had always liked photos of cultural icons. At his first house in Los Gatos, near his mattress, he had kept pictures of Albert Einstein and an Eastern mystical guru. Steve also loved black-and-white photography. He hung Ansel Adams prints at the Palo Alto house. Those were the elements: the slogan, the icons, the monochrome tableaux.
The first outsider to see the new ads was Newsweek’s Katie Hafner. She arrived at Apple’s headquarters at ten on a Friday morning for an interview with Steve. He kept her waiting a long time. Finally he emerged. His chin was covered by stubble. He was exhausted from having stayed up all night editing footage for the “Think Different” television spot. The creative directors at Chiat/Day would send him video clips over a satellite connection, and he would say yes or no. Now the montage was finally complete.
Steve sat with Katie and they watched the commercial.
Steve was crying.
“That’s what I love about him,” Katie recalls. “It wasn’t trumped-up. Steve was genuinely moved by that stupid ad.”
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ON SEPTEMBER 30, 1997, Steve assembled Apple’s employees for an outdoor party—with beer and strictly vegetarian cuisine—to celebrate the new campaign.
He explained that Apple’s ads were going to convey an image and an attitude rather than simply describing a product. As a model, he talked about how Nike’s ads projected a sense of athleticism and success without even showing its shoes.
“Apple spends a hundred million dollars a year on advertising,” Steve said, “and it hasn’t done us much good.” They were going to continue spending $100 million a year, but now they were going to spend it better, he said, because now they realized that the Apple brand was one of the most valuable things they had going for them.
One of the employees in the audience was a young woman named Kate Adams. It was the first time she had seen Steve speak close up, and she was very excited. “It was a good—no, great—speech, delivered in a ’I might sound like I’m musing but I’m damned sure of what I’m saying’ tone,” she wrote in an e-mail message to a friend.
Her friend turned out to be a software entrepreneur, Dave Winer, who wrote DaveNet, a column that he e-mailed to hundreds of the most influential people in the industry, including CEOs like Bill Gates and Michael Dell. To Kate’s surprise, Dave published her e-mail in its entirety: a long, detailed account of Steve’s talk.
The next day, Kate received a voice-mail message.
“Hi, this is Steve Jobs. I’d like to get together and chat with you.”
Steve’s voice sounded cheerful. What did he want? Was this some management theory of his, calling random mid-level employees and picking their brains for a while? Or was he pissed off by the DaveNet column?
Kate called Steve’s secretary