Brand Identity and Elements of Apple

A brand identity is a term in branding that helps companies to make their products or services distinct, powerful, and catchy. There are several elements in the notion of brand identity and today we are going to discuss the example of Apple, the genius of marketing. How did they manage to be that kind of smart and create a powerful brand like Apple?

What is the identity of Apple?

This is a question that could be answered in different ways, but I want to give some of my opinions.

1. Apple’s brand image is strictly connected to Steve Jobs. The following personality was the ruler and identification of the brand. All the new products were released by the presentation of this genius entrepreneur. So the first thing that comes to my mind while remembering Apple is Steve Jobs and bein genius like him. Here Apple tells us that everybody could be genius if we buy the brand.
2. A different operating system like Ios. Apple does everything in different ways. They are always against the existing cultures and so they created something with their vision and many people claim that the operating system is many times better than Android. Who knows?
3. The history of the foundation of the brand. It is founded in the United States of America and this fact gives an interesting identity to Apple. Also, the history of the foundation is very well known, how 2 or 3 friends created the company that will change world history.
4. The simplicity mixed with white and grey colors. What we first notice in the design of Apple is simplicity and it is everywhere, in their packaging, in their operating systems. For a long time, this was their main philosophy, to do everything easy and smart.

Another great part of Apple’s identity is the brand archetype that the brand is based on.

Again we come to their slogan which tells us “Think different”. Just be different, do not be the same as you have been before. The revolutionary direction prompts us about some basics of their branding tactics. The following tactics are based on the brand archetype, especially the “Outlaw” brand archetype. What does the Outlaw brand archetype represent?

• The desire of the brand archetype is revenge and revolution.
• The goal of the archetype is to destroy things that are not working.
• The strategy of the archetype is to shock and disrupt all around.

The Outlaw brand archetype is used by numerous well-known brands, including Paypal and Harley-Davidson, in addition to Apple.

Here are the messaging levels of the Outlaw archetype.

1. The outlaw brand archetype mentions the condition where we feel powerless, mistreated, and angry and we need to do something.
2. The outlaw brand archetype speaks about people who are identified as outsiders and need to break the lines and go ahead.
3. So here the brands tell us to behave in shocking and disruptive ways, to shock everybody and be unique.
4. Some brands tell us to be complete revolutionaries and rebels like Harley Davidson does.

The outlaw brand archetype is a perfect identity for your brand if

1. If customers or employees are feeling very disaffiliated from the community.
2. The product has a clear function to destroy something useless.
3. Your product has a price from moderate to low.

Brand Archetypes. Why do we need them in practice?

Various messaging strategies could be used as part of our communication plan. All of these, however, are logically connected by a framework that is known as communication based on archetypal branding. There may be several messages from a company, but none of them are connected. For example, “Go ahead and be strong,” “Do everything with ease,” or “Dig deeper and be knowledgeable.”

These three quotations have various underlying meanings and are used for various purposes. The first emphasizes becoming a hero, while the second is concerned with experience. These two distinct messaging trajectories are given more originality and clarity by the brand archetypes. By reading the book “8 steps to a complete archetypal branding,” you can find out more about communicating with archetypes.

What I want is to dig deeper and find out more about Apple’s identity. By looking at their brand positioning tactics.

It is composed of 3 main parts.

1. The category, what is the range of Apple products?

2. Benefits, differentiation, How Apple is better than others.

3. Core, main idea. What is the crucial idea that Apple wants its clients to remember?

Category.

The category of the brand is the consumer electronics brand. They produce smartphones, earphones laptops, and different kinds of consumer electronic gadgets. Apple was the first to introduce touch screen smartphones, iPods, and many revolutionary products. Being a revolutionary is the philosophy of Apple and they pursue it for decades.

Here are some Apple products that they have launched or will launch.

• Apple watches the simple design.
• Apple glasses that will be launched in 2020
• Apple car, an electric car that would be made to change everything before it.

Benefits and differentiation

Apple differentiates itself in many ways.  They have a completely different smartphone user experience software. the IOS. Many people claim that it is the easiest and simplest way of navigation. Another great benefit that 2.

Another benefit that Apple provides us is the super design of smartphones, laptops, and any of their products. Their design was revolutionary and all the brands started to follow their super slim and colorful directions.

Steve Jobs. The brand has successfully differentiated itself by linking its name with its genius founder Steve Jobs. His personality was very unique and appealing. So people fell in love with him as well as what he presented to people.

The core communication idea.

We can start with their slogan which says “Think different”. The following slogan has been around for decades and many generations have learned to think differently. Moreover, their messaging style is based on archetypal branding tactics and especially on the outlaw brand archetype which has a desire for revenge and revolution, which wants to shock and destroy the old structures.

Apple did so. Every new product of Apple was a revolutionary, it made new culture and directions in technology and design.

Now we shall discuss the brand elements of Apple.

What are they? The logo, the slogan, the archetype, and a lot more.

Let’s begin with their name.

The name element. It is Apple and it is a surprise to all of us. I was a child when I heard it and thought it was fun. Steve Jobs once told the secret behind the name, he said that once he was coming back from an Apple garden and thought that it could be the brand name as it is “Fun, spirited and not intimidated”.

And the rest is history. The name brought success to the company and everybody was happy with it. Another great name combination was the “I” abbreviation on their products. The iMac, iPhone, and other great I-s. The genius naming tactics made people love even more the great brand.

The logo element. Everybody is aware of the logo element of APple. the bitten Apple. It is not just an apple but it is bitten which is very surprising. One can look at it for a long time and try to understand what is the secret beneath the perfection of the logo.

Nobody has done something like this before. IN their first logo we could see Isaac Newton who was sitting under a tree then the story developed and new versions of the logo were born. Then Steve Jobs hired a graphic designer whose name was Rob Janoff, who created the new classic and famous logo, the bitten apple.

Why is it a bitten apple? Just because the primary version of apple was very similar to a cherry. So they created a distinct design so that everybody could acknowledge the picture of Apple.

The slogan element. “Think different” Just 2 words and the game has been changed. Every Apple user began to think differently. Why the slogan was so successful? Just like other Steve Jobs inventions, the slogan was a revolutionary.

It made people unique and different. Not everybody can be different, so Apple allowed them to be different w their products. Now whoever has Apple, he/she belongs to a top community of Apple owners. So be different, but at first “think different”. 

The color element. I just visited their website to understand clearly what type of coloring Apple mainly uses.

And here is an interesting screenshot of their first page.

What we see in this pic.

There are 4 main colors. The white, the black, the grey, and of course the blue. This is e solid and classical direction that Apple has adopted, a little cold style makes people fall in lo e with the design of the website.

Here is the color palette of the latest iPhone 11. We see here interesting variations of famous colors like red, yellow or green. People want something new and a new color iPhone is what we search for as technology is very advanced and almost no novelties are left, so Apple put the spell on colorful branding.

The website.

Here is a stripe of the Apple website. They advertise a lot their latest products, whether it is AirPods or the brand new iPhone. Here we see a stripe is divided into 2 parts, Airpods, and Apple Tv. Also, we notice here that the texts are as short as we can not imagine. This is a famine of texts and they did so in purpose, maybe Apple does not need to be introduced with great paragraphs

The packaging.

Their packaging is so similar to their product appearances. So simple made, no complications. They tried hard to do everything simply and here is their packaging example. iPhone was the first smartphone that had that kind of small and easy packaging style. And of course, the color is always white, this is how we differentiate them in the huge market.

I hope you liked the post, I suggest you check out other posts about the branding of great companies on thesocialgrabber.com.