Benin Brown

8:50 PM | Posted by Benin | Edit Post Even before owning a Mac or an iPod I have always been enamored with the Apple brand. And lately with the recent iPad unveiling the brand has been on my mind more than ever.

One of my observations about Apple is that they seem to enjoy the most pristine and unsullied consumer brand in the world. Much has been said about the company's use of tightly controlled and proprietary systems, however, this is probably of the chief reasons that Apple that is able to possess such a singular idea in the minds of consumers.

When I think of Apple what comes to mind is "forget about being commercial...its all about unapologetic innovation for innovation's sake". In doing so Apple has birthed a brand of one.

If there was one aspect of marketing that Apple has mastered it would be the Ries Law of Publicity (from The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding), which says that,

"The birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising. A new brand must be capable of generating buzz through the media and the public."

What is so interesting in fact about Apple's mastery of this law is that while most brands lose their luster and ability to generate publicity after a few years-more than 25 years later Apple is still wooing crowds. Take the iPad, for instance, it seems that for years bloggers and the tech community have been foretelling Apple creating an iPad-like device. So it should be no surprise that from the moment Steve Jobs proclaimed Apple's impending "big announcement" until the iPad was actually unveiled Apple has received a countless and near priceless amount of publicity from bloggers and any other media outlet that you can think of-both big and small.

But Apple doesn't stop there. I am told that that just one visit to their site is enough to give a usability pro goose bumps. The site is a study in what it means to have an effective user interface...Notice the consistent site navigation, the clean and simple interface, the intuitive labeling of everything, see how easy it is to find what you are looking for on this mammoth of a site? Now...contrast this to a competitor's website and you'll know what I mean.

My final observation about Apple is that they have successfully merged their Internet marketing strategy with their offline strategy in a way where instead of bumping into each other the two strategies seem to be seamlessly intertwined.