Say Hi To Brand 'Jobs'!!

'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.’

—Steve Jobs

It all started way back in 1984 when an emotional Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh. He always did it in style didn’t he? A young dashing man walked across the stage to unveil the machine that redefined computing. His journey with Apple was nothing less than a roller-coaster ride. But, this article isn’t about his journey with Apple. You would find many highlighting that on the internet. The question I want to discuss at Teched is, is brand ‘Jobs’ larger than brand ‘Apple’?

If you have seen the video of the launch of Macintosh (incase you haven’t, I insist that you should), you must have noticed how Jobs unveiled the portable PC from that bag, removed a floppy from his pocket and witnessed the crowd go bizarre. But there was more to it than Macintosh. That evening in 1984, saw the launch of brand ‘Jobs’. Everything changed for Apple after the voice from Macintosh thanked its ‘father’, Steve Jobs as the audience witnessed the man showcase breakthrough innovations year-after-year.

When we think of Steve Jobs, we get an image of a man wearing a full sleeved black t-shirt, blue denims and oval shaped glasses. One would also associate Jobs to innovation and charisma. Jobs is both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the "reality distortion field", a term coined by his colleagues to describe his ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of superficial charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. RDF is said to distort an audience's sense of proportion and scales of difficulties and makes them believe that the task at hand is possible.

Year-after-year, Jobs represented Apple and showcased their innovations. He became the face of the company. People started associating Apple to Steve Jobs instead of associating it to its products. This was evident when Jobs went on a medical leave for 6 months in 2009. This very announcement resulted in a major drop in Apple Inc.’s stocks. In 2010, at the WWDC, Apple was to launch the iPhone 4. But the crowd didn't seem to be interested in checking out the new offering. They, instead were all there to get a glimpse of their hero. This was evident from the fact that the tickets for WWDC which generally take about a month to sell out, were actually sold out in just 8 days. The standing ovation that the audience gave when he appeared on the stage just reiterates his popularity.

With increasing competition in the market, the audience for ‘smart devices’ is now divided. There are people who would swear by an Apple product while the other set of people are the ones who have migrated to competitors like Samsung and HTC. I personally belong to the second set of people as I believe that Apple products no longer define industry standards in-terms of innovation. However, I also believe that Apple has something that no one else in the market has; Steve Jobs. His existence in itself is a major crowd puller.

I believe that the popularity of brand ‘Jobs’, is largely because of the success of brand Apple. Jobs would not have been looked upon with trust had Apple not produced the kind of products they actually did. Looking at it from the flipside, Apple wouldn’t have been the company it is today without the charismatic Jobs spearheading it. So is Jobs a larger brand than Apple? I don’t really know and honestly, it doesn’t really matter as long as the genius called Jobs continues to innovate and take Apple Inc. to new heights.

People believe that Apple might find it difficult to sustain itself in the absence of Steve Jobs. But for now, with Jobs around, all I would like to say is, “Say Hi to Brand ‘Jobs’!”