I totally love Apple products and have in the past used the Apple brand as a reference point for just about anything positive when it comes to great branding, but just recently I wonder if things are shifting?
The problem is that Apple’s stupefying dominance of its markets as the cool challenger fighting for “insanely great products” has lately been translating into it acting more like the school playground bully abusing his premature growth spurt than the plucky underdog.
This is particularly prevalent in the mobile and apps world where story after story has appeared recently where the ‘poor bullied newspaper owner/network provider/software developer’ tells how they had their arms twisted behind their backs during negotiations with Apple and are left tearfully complaining that the big boy ‘took their sweets’ – or 30% of their revenues.
This isn’t perhaps Apple’s fault but it is Apple’s problem. Just as once upon a time the entertainment industry was worried that Tony Blair’s election as British Prime Minister or Barak Obama’s as US President meant that political sataire was dead because they were just so damn cool and so well loved by everyone who mattered; so it’s true that the fortunes of super-dominant brands can wane just as quickly.
Will Apple respond? Maybe, but more likely they will feel that the criticism is unjustified and unfair and just carry on straining every muscle to get stronger – even if that means leaving even more of their rivals feeling a little bruised and tearful and more importantly for Apple, more of their customers wishing they’d just ‘play a bit nicer’ with the smaller kids.
