Apple Marketing's Top 10 Dumb Mistakes

Conventional wisdom says that Apple's success is the result of superlative marketing. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Apple's marketing has always been mediocre (at best), and at worst has been a complete disaster, dragging back products that otherwise might have been far more successful.

To illustrate this point, I've collected a list of Apple's top 10 dumb marketing mistakes. After the list, I explain why Apple is so successful, despite the fact that its marketing prowess is so questionable.

CLICK for Apple Dumb Marketing Mistake #10 »
And for an opposing viewpoint, check out this post:

• "Top 10 Reasons NOT to Buy an iPhone (Funny!)"

• Description: For decades, Apple priced the Macintosh at a premium over comparably-powered IBM-compatible PCs.
• Why It Was Dumb: Apple marketing apparently believed that the added value of the Apple brand, and the superior usability of the product justified a higher price. But the truth is that as Windows became the de-facto standard, the Macintosh environment became a liability that would have required a LOWER price in order to compel people to continue to buy.
• The Obvious Alternative: Apple marketing should have understood that the incompatibility of the Apple product with the majority of other platforms represented a barrier to market entry, not an advantage. As such, they should have priced the Macintosh significantly lower than a comparably-powered PC and positioned it away from the business market.

• Description: Apple never attracted game developers to the Macintosh, never launched a game machine, and has only sporadically promoted the iPod and iPhone as handheld gaming platforms.
• Why It Was Dumb: Since the main strength of the IBM-compatible PC was in business applications, the home and consumer market was available for an alternative platform. However, Apple's appeal to the consumer market was vastly weakened by the fact that the Macintosh seldom had the latest and greatest games, which are THE killer applications for a home-based computer platform.
• The Obvious Alternative: Apple marketing should have moved hell and high water (i.e. paid big bucks) to make sure that game developers put their games on the Macintosh first. Beyond that, Apple marketing should have pressed the company to turn the Macintosh or a related product into a gaming console long before arch-rivals Microsoft and Sony locked up that market.

• Description: Apple, alone of all the major high tech manufacturers, refuses to release an official report on the sustainability and environmental impact of its manufacturing and supply chain.
• Why It Is Dumb: You'd think that a company with Al Gore on its board, and with a reputation for having "green" products, would realize that reinforcing that image is a good idea. However, Apple's perceived secrecy around its environmental track record has raised the ire of environmentalists, attracting negative attention to Apple in an area that should be one of the company's strengths.
• The Obvious Alternative: In a recent proxy filing, Apple stated that "the board believes that the proposal has been substantially addressed and publication of an additional report would produce little added value while requiring unnecessary time and expense." However, the amount of time and expense involved would be minimal compared to Apple's huge marketing budget. So just publish the d**n report, OK?

• Description: For a few years, Apple allowed other manufacturers to make Macintosh clones. The company later rescinded those licenses, driving those vendors quickly out of business.
• Why It Was Dumb: The strategy was an obvious attempt to imitate the "success" of IBM's strategy of an "open" PC platform. However, Apple failed to notice that IBM was struggling in the PC market (and would eventually sell it off), and that, in any case, an "open platform" strategy -- which worked (sort of) in a geometrically growing market -- didn't make any sense in a mature market where the platform battle was already lost. In addition, the fact that Apple royally screwed its erstwhile partners didn't win the company any friends in the marketplace, and drove even more potential partners into the Microsoft camp.
• The Obvious Alternative: Don't allow cloning of a product that's value lies in being proprietary. To its credit, Apple marketing finally figured this out, but only after it became clear to everyone else in the world that Mac clones didn't make any business sense.

• Description: Apple continues to promote the concept of Apple TV on its website and marketing materials.
• Why It Is Dumb: The product is a widely seen as an industry joke. People don't want to consume television in this way and there are numerous other platforms that do a much better job at both the delivery and the purchasing of the content.
• The Obvious Alternative: It's a zombie. Kill it.

CLICK for Apple Dumb Marketing Mistake #5 »
Mistake #5: Sleeping with Microsoft

• Description: Apple forged an alliance with Microsoft to get Microsoft's office software on the Macintosh platform.
• Why It Was Dumb: While Apple is finally in a position to get some well-earned revenge, the entire history of the Apple/Microsoft alliance has consisted of Apple dropping its pants and bending over a barrel. By focusing on Microsoft Office, Apple marketing continued to flog the idea of Macintosh as a business computer, rather than a consumer computer, thereby making certain that the IBM-compatible PC (which was always going to be the favored platform for Microsoft's software) would remain dominant.
• The Obvious Alternative: Apple marketing should have put its energy into landing applications that were unique to the Macintosh, uniquely valuable to the home market, thereby positioning Apple as far as possible from Microsoft. Apple, of course, finally figured this out about five years ago with the iPod, but that was after a decade of getting regularly screwed by the giant of Redmond.

• Description: Apple is widely known among business journalists and industry analysts as an insanely difficult company to work with. Their PR people seldom answer press inquiries and their executives treat journalists as unwanted pests.
• Why It Is Dumb: You end up with articles like What's the bug up Apple's @$$? and When did Apple become uncool? And when you're really stupid and have a business reporter arrested for reporting about your future product, you get TV coverage like the Jon Stewart video I've posted below.
• The Obvious Alternative: While the field of business journalism does include its share of independent thinkers, most are more than willing to kiss corporate butt if you throw them a bone once in a while. Every other company in high tech manages to be helpful to the business press. Apple marketing's continued arrogance is just plain stupid.

• Description: Apple is still posing as the underdog, the scrappy fighter against the big bad forces of the IBM PC world.
• Why It Is Dumb: Apple's market valuation and yearly revenue is currently about the same as Microsoft. Eventually, even Apple fanboys will figure out that Apple is a corporate behemoth whose corporate headquarters resembles the movie set for an updated remake of 1984, replete with security cameras, secret codes, and all the accoutrement of a police state.
• The Obvious Alternative: It's been nearly a quarter of a century since Apple marketing devised the underdog story. Give it a rest, for cryin' out loud. Apple marketing should build a story that fits Apple's real status in the business world.

• Description: Apple recently purged 6,000 apps from the iPhone/iPod library that it deemed "too sexy."
• Why It Is Dumb: Porn is one of the big drivers of traffic on the Internet. If Apple is going to displace the current PC-based Internet environment, it will need to capture some of that traffic. Furthermore, the PC world of porn is having trouble monetizing content in a world where peer-to-peer sharing has become common, a problem that wouldn't exist in the Apple environment. Apple marketing is therefore throwing away a multi-billion dollar revenue stream.
• The Obvious Alternative: Woo-hoo!

• Description: Apple granted AT&T exclusive rights to the iPhone until 2012.
• Why It Was Dumb: The iPhone has been successful, sure, but think how much more successful it would be if it were supported by every carrier (or even more than just one carrier? The delay in getting the iPhone on other carriers has created a marketing opening for other platforms, like Android, which otherwise wouldn't never have had even the ghost of a chance.
• The Obvious Alternative: Apple marketing should have landed multiple carriers with no exclusivity. Sure it would have been harder to negotiate such deals, but a really savvy marketing group would have understood the importance of NOT locking out the majority of a market during an all-important early adoption phase.

1. The world's great consumer electronics engineering team.
2. The world's greatest pitchman, namely Steve Jobs.

READERS: Feel free to argue with me, but you're going to lose this one, because I'm right on target here.

BTW: If you enjoyed this post, you'll probably enjoy:

• Top 10 Dumb Reasons Apple Beat Microsoft
• "Top 10 Reasons NOT to Buy an iPhone (Funny!)"