21 April 2011 Apple, Inc

Apple, Inc.   

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne created Apple Computer, Inc. in April 1976. When the company first started, the only products offered were computers. However, since the product line has expanded, in January 2007, the men decided to shorten the name to just Apple, Inc. Currently, the products offered are: laptop computers, desktop computers, servers, Apple TV, operating systems, iPods, iPhones, and the iPad (Apple).

  The CEO of the corporation is Steve Jobs, one of the founders (Apple). On March 4 of this year, Apple announced that their top advertising executive, Rebecca Van Dyck, was leaving Apple, where she has worked for four years, to take a job as the chief marketing officer of the Levi’s brand (Apple, Inc.). The Apple website does not list who the new advertising executive is. Philip Schiller is the SVP of Worldwide Marketing for Apple. These three people were the only communications people listed in Apple’s executive list (Apple).

Current Communications

Apple, Inc. seems to focus only on advertising, but not using much public relations does not seem to hurt the company. In 2009, Apple spent $501 million on advertising for the year. While this seems like a lot of money, it pales in comparison to the amount that Microsoft and Dell spent. Microsoft spent $1.4 billion and Dell spent $811 million. Actually, Apple has been decreasing their advertising budget for the past eight years. The fact that Apple is decreasing their budget and that they do not have a big public relations department, but they are still successful, shows how good the company’s communication through advertising is (Elmer-DeWitt) . They may be decreasing their budget, but their profit margin is constantly increasing. Apple is a strong corporation.

Apple’s main forms of advertising are in the print and TV form. They have had a series of successful print campaigns, like the iPeople campaign where there was a  black  silhouette image of a person on a bright colored background. There was also the highly successful TV campaign with Justin Long and John Hodgman where one was a  PC and one was a Mac.

Need for Social Media Monitoring

Although Apple, Inc. runs successful print and television advertising campaigns, the debate over their success in the social media industry is an interesting one. One article from February 2011 placed Apple as second in the Top 50 Social Media Brands. The list was based on how well the company effectively and consistently engaged its customers via social media channels. However, another article talks about how inconsistent Apple is with social media. I checked Facebook and could not find a company page with any wall posts on it like other companies have. But, the company does have a good presence on Twitter. They do not have an official Apple page, but they have pages for Apps ,iTunes Trailers,  iTunes Podcasts, iTunes TV, iTunes Music, and iTunes Movies.  Philip Schiller and some of the other vice presidents also have Twitter pages.  It is important that  Apple develops a strong social media presence of its own. Currently, the main social media presence for Apple comes from customers and blogs. Luckily for Apple though, they are a strong enough company that they do not have to rely heavily on social media for advertising success because the Apple brand is strong enough on its own.

  Apple, Inc. should monitor the online conversation about its brand because customers want to feel connected to the company. If they keep writing about Apple products, they want to be acknowledged for the things they say. It is clear that  Apple does not have to worry about a lot of negative comments from customers, so monitoring the conversation should be easy and fun for the company. It would be easy to offer iTunes gift cards to bloggers who constantly blog praising Apple products. Things like that would make  a big impression. Also, the company needs to keep up the relationship they have with their Twitter followers by releasing some news about new Apps or something like that to Twitter first because it will make the followers feel important. If Apple will continue developing their social media presence, it is sure that more and more customers will get on the bandwagon with Apple. There is a huge window of opportunity for Apple, Inc. through social media that they do not need to miss out on.

Methodology
  This analysis required that various forms of social media be monitored for content, good or bad, which pertains to Apple Inc. and its products. Over the course of two weeks (March 21 – April 4), our group looked at various types of social media including web sites, blogs, microblogs, and Facebook.

Many of our blogs and websites were found through Google search and Google blogs.  We found this to be a very reliable way of finding credible blogs and sites because Google is updated frequently and is the most popular search engine on the Internet. We were also able to verify some of our blogs credibility by checking their blog rolls and links to other blogs. We then were able to cross-reference with our Google Blogs search results to further verify our blogs credibility.

For our Facebook results, we simply monitored Apple Inc.’s Facebook page that was linked to Wikipedia (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Apple-Inc/105596369475033) for comments that had Apple tagged in them. As of now, it looks as though Apple doesn’t have an official Facebook page, however we were able to identify both positive and negative posts that pertained to Apple via this page. As for Twitter, we searched our keywords as hash tags to find tweets that were relevant to Apple. As of now, Apple doesn’t have an official twitter. However, iTunes has various official Twitter accounts that relate to each of their media that they sell.

Results

From monitoring the online conversation about Apple, Inc., it was easy to see how much people like the company. For the most part, the feedback was positive. People love Apple products and the service that comes with those products, but there was negative feedback about some of the outlets Apple uses to sell its products. For example, Verizon customers complained about problems with getting an iPhone because they were out of stock. This problem has nothing to do with the Apple brand, but more to do with Verizon not being prepared for the rush on Apple products. Overall, the monitoring showed how a lot of people use Apple daily, and some people even have a life consumed by Apple, since they use all Apple products. We will use a SWOT analysis to further go in to detail about what we learned from monitoring the online conversation about Apple, Inc.

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  Apple products use cutting edge technology. Since our society is in the market for the best and newest products, Apple often has an advantage over other companies.
  
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  Apple products have a very sleek design.
  
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  There is a certain “cool” factor that comes with using Apple products. For example, when iPods came out, young teenagers wanted to get one to fit in and be cool like their peers that had iPods.
  
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  Even though the brand has not been around for that long, it is evident that it will be around for a long time. Apple keeps coming out with new products, as well as updating their current products. Apple is here to stay.
  
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  Apple products last a long time and have good warranties available for purchase. The company is very good about fixing defective products.
  
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  Apple is traditionally known for being innovative.
  
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  There is a constant high demand for Apple products. People stand in long lines to get the new iPod, iPad, or iPhone.
  
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  Apple is the chosen choice for certain hobbies and professions. For example, graphic design programs work best on Apple, like Final Cut Pro, inDesign and Photoshop. Apple computers are just better for doing design work.
  

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  Apple products are known for higher prices than other similar products.
  

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  PC users may be unlikely to convert because Apple computers do not function and have the same buttons that PCs have.
  
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  Older users may see Apple products as too high tech.
  
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  Some wireless carriers do not have iPhones, and those that do get them are not able to offer the same capabilities on their version of the iPhone like the first carrier, AT&T can.
  
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  Shortages as a result of high demand may cause people to get a similar product because they do not want to have to wait on Apple.
  
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  Apple is thought to be inferior to PCs for certain hobbies and professions, since unlike PCs, all Apple computers do not run the Windows system.
  

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  Apple, Inc. has a very positive reputation that is can use when launching new products. The public trusts Apple, so they are willing to invest in new products without waiting on a big group to rate the product.
  
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  There is a great opportunity for expansion in mobile market. We have just seen the expansion to Verizon, but there are still other carriers that want Apple products.
  
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  Apple continues to take advantage of being first on the scene of new products, like the iPad. Apple may not be the first to invent or introduce a new product but they will be the best.
  
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  There is a growing market in applications for iPhones and iPads that Apple can capitalize on.
  
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  There are limitless opportunities in new and emerging technology.
  
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  Since Apple launched Ping, the social network for music, they have the opportunity to promote it and persuade Apple users to get on the bandwagon to make Ping a huge success.
  

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  The technology market is extremely competitive. As soon as one company comes out with a product, the other companies are on the cusp of launching a similar product to compete with the current product on the market.
  
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  Every company is looking to compete with Apple because they realize that Apple is at the top of the competition list.
  
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  Each hardware or software glitch creates a negative experience so Apple needs to keep updating their apps and products to make them as problem-free as possible.
  
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  Not all applications are associated with Apple, but problems with them can reflect badly on Apple anyway.
  
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  Microsoft created the Xbox, but Apple does not have a gaming system, yet.
  

We learned many things about Apple from monitoring the online conversation about the brand.

Apple has many opportunities to improve their already thriving brand. The biggest thing Apple needs to do is to create presence for itself on Twitter and Facebook.