“Those Get-a-Mac spots aren’t cheap, but they deliver a lot of bang for the buck,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“Apple shells out a ton of money for advertising. In fiscal 2009 it spent $501 million, according to the 10-K form filed Tuesday,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “That’s up from $486 million in 2008 and $467 million in 2007.”
“But half a billion doesn’t seem like so much when it’s compared with the $1.4 billion Microsoft spent in fiscal 2009, or the $811 million Dell spent on ads I can’t remember ever seeing,” Elmer-DeWitt reports.
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “In fact, as a percentage of revenue, Apple has actually been decreasing its ad spending every year for the past eight, from nearly 5% in 2001 to 1.37% today. That’s about half the 3.6% Research in Motion’s spends advertising BlackBerries ($336 million).”
Read more in the full article, including ideas about why Apple’s ad spend is so effective, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dale E.” for the heads up.]
Dell advertises? Really? I thought they stopped that practice when the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” kid got busted for drugs.
This is a great rebuttal to all the doofuses who insist that Apple’s success is all due to marketing smoke and mirrors.
If that were true, MS and Dell and RIM should have buried them long ago.
More likely the bad Dell ads are what pushed the Dell kid to take drugs to numb the pain. (I have trouble remembering any Dell ads.)
or the $811 million Dell spent on ads I can’t remember ever seeing
Ouch… that’s a lot of money to spend for zero gain, especially on a super-thin budget like Mikey’s.
“1.37% today. That’s about half the 3.6% Research in Motion’s spends advertising BlackBerries”
Wouldn’t that be closer to 1/3rd than half?
Dell ads are probably just so dull and boring that you don’t even notice them, much like their computers.
Some of the commercials dell wasted money on were those stupid candy factory commercials pushing low margin net books.
Holy crap, Dell spends $300 million more on advertising then Apple and I can’t remember any of their ads.
Oh ya, that one stupid lollypop one. But seriously, 800 million and that is all I remember? Huge waste of money. And god knows they need all the money they can get.
Here is a great way for Apple to spend a bit of its ad money in January. Run the old “Think Different” ad during the Super Bowl. The only change they would need to make is replace the technicolor Apple logo at the end with the new silver logo.
@84MacGuy,
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You’re just saying that because of your name!
The only Dell ads I remember recently were the “Lollipop” ads.
Kind of sad that all they could advertise was that their laptops came in a variety of colors.
If it weren’t for the infectious pop tune used in the ad, I doubt I would have remembered it at all.
Another interesting observation – Microsoft and Dell combined spent around $2.2 billion on advertising. That’s over 4 times more than what Apple spent. And that doesn’t even count what the other PC hardware makers have spent.
Which clearly demonstrates that the Windows PC business model is far more efficient, what with them marketing the hardware and the software separately…
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Half a billion is a drop in the profit bucket for Apple. And no one gets more bang for the buck on advertising air time than Apple.
There’s a quality to everything Apple does, from it’s products, to it’s marketing, stores, User Interface, support, etc.
It’s the reason the Company has Zealot’s. When you add it all together, it dwarfs the Pee Cee side of the equation, hence, people notice and are appreciative of something so distinctive that caters to their needs.
I bet hiring Jerry Seinfeld to do an ad doesn’t come cheap, but $1.4 billion!! Man, that’d buy a lot of chairs….
That is because part of the 1.4 million from microsoft is to promote Mac in their ads
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Also, Mac are “self promoted: but its good quality, but microsoft need to spends so much in “Analyst” to give them good reviews.
And remember, only part of that money that Apple spent went to the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” campaign. A lot of it goes to product placement, where Apple thoroughly dominates. Majority of prime time TV shows (dramas, as well as sitcoms) feature principal characters somehow interacting with MacBooks, iPods, iPhones, iMacs… It is practially impossible to see a protagonist with a computer that is not Apple (antagonists? not so much; they oftentimes have Dell, ThinkPad or some bland, grey nondescript laptop).
A perfect example is the scene from the show “Chuck”:
What’s ironic is, in all likelihood, Apple didn’t even need to pay for that one…
Dell does a bunch of direct marketing. I get flyers from them constantly both at home and work. Don’t know why, I never bought or even inquired about anything from them.
Heh heh.. Chuck…. I love that show…. or maybe it’s just the female lead…. anyway the all powerful ‘Intersect Computer’ has only been shown a couple of times and it sure looks like a Mac+ to me!
Too funny!
It is interesting that Apple’s budget, as a portion of its earnings, has been going down while it’s reach has been going up. And Dell’s budget … where are they spending those dollars? Direct marketing to Enterprise clients? Or MSFT?
Maybe this is like Real Estate? What matters most is location, Location, LOCATION? Of course, part of their budgets must have been spent overseas, Apple has less need in that department.
Exactly why DELL I’d doomed to failure. If Mikey had taken say 1/2 that money and dunk it into R&D;for a fresh Linux based operating system for either a fresh line of computers that is consumer based and can be differentiated from the Windiws boxes. He might be growing market share rather than treading water right now. It is amazing how the majority of American businesses continue to repeat history rather than learn from it as Apple continuously does.
Mikey’s thing was supply chain management. That is the only trick DELL had and they applied it to everything they had till everything was commoditized. When everyone caught up, they had no product differentiation or customer satisfaction to speak of. Direct mail in the back of Parade magazine reminds me of those ads you saw in the back Popular Science or Popolar Mechanics advertising WWII era Jeeps for $50. By the time you were able to do any useful work with their advertised specials the price had tripled.
If you noticed anything during the last 3 economic down turns Apple minimized staff cutbacks and redoudbled their R&D;efforts. This does 3 things, it keeps people working and off the unemployment rolls and capable of still pumping money into the economy, making any down turn short lived. It accelerates your progress to developing the next best thing so as the economy improves your company is ready to capitalize. Finally it allows the company to expand upon it’s options and offerings and can even create good will and loyalty from consumers, employees and suppliers not to mention the lower cost long term cost of this strategy, as opposed to the dump an entire division and go in a new direction strategy employed by other businesses.
Only a fraction goes to TV ads.
My fiance works at Apple’s agency and tells me some pretty wild things about the team working on Apple. It’s all biometric security and NDAs.