“Apple’s reputation, products, and imagery have coalesced into a brand, a mark that’s burned (as in the word’s origin) into the collective consciousness,” Jean-Louis Gassée writes for Monday Note. “Last year, Forbes called Apple the world’s most valuable brand.”
“At Apple… the product, not the brand, is the hero. Apple’s ads focus on the product, on what it does, on the feats that it allows unnamed customers to perform. The brand ascends to where it belongs, above specific products and promotions,” Gassée writes. “Given this thinking, what do we make of Apple’s other brand, Beats?”
“It’s a novel situation: Apple Thinks Different about the two brands it now owns. The personal computing brand is carefully nurtured, pruned, protected, now at the pinnacle,” Gassée writes. “The other is just as carefully kept apart.”
Read more in the full article here.