Think different

So the 90s were rocky, but no, Apple always had something different.

That was their famous campaign, Think Different, wasn't it?

And you knew that? You recognised that? Yes.

You built your own business around that technology? Well, I wanted to differentiate

Well, and I think it also gave you, and this is a, you know, intended pun.

It also allowed you to think different, which, you know, of course.

Yeah.

If any of you know the ad

How do you be different than somebody else? But different isn't always better.

Some people would be different so they didn't have to compete.

You know, when Steve thought to think different was absolutely thinking completely different, thinking out of the box, thinking about things that have never been done before.

You know, Target was just being different, right? So Steve taught me to think different in an entirely different way.

Let's look quick.

What else we got here? The Think Different poster sets.

Here's a...

I'm surprised this didn't get that much.

And this is where the engine of advertising since the industrial revolution has really been shaping who we are, how we behave in market, and definitely our purchase decisions.

This advertising juggernaut is where we've gotten things like Apple's Think Different, Intel's To, you know, inside these landmark marketing campaigns.

And this is the world that I've historically worked in and built a business in.

But the kind of controversial piece and a lot of where my research and studies have focused at Oxford is around this idea of the trust economy starting to replace trust.

We'll get taken off here.

But basically it was like this opening line to Apple's Think Different campaign, which was around, which was leveraging that, right? Which is this Think Different, again, really espousing that message of- Sorry, can I just say

something? So the number of times I've invoked the Think Different campaign and somebody corrects me and says, that should be Think Differently.

That's the whole point.

No, you missed it.

You fool.

But again, going back to this concept of that think different sort of advertising campaign, which embodied that idea that this is for the crazy ones.

This is for the people who think differently.

In an interview with GQ, Justin said that McDonald's stock, quote, "went up by 25% when I walked into those offices and changed their image." Now, celebrities wanting a bigger piece of the pie is a testament to just how successful I'm Loving It has been for McDonald's.

It's one of the biggest and longest-running marketing campaigns of all time, up there with Nike's Just Do It and Apple's Think Different.

McDonald's chief marketing officer went as far as calling I'm Loving It a multibillion-dollar asset.

These days, you don't actually hear the words I'm loving it in McDonald's commercials as much as you used to.

Of course, Eric always has that picture in the background with that in his background.

The original Macintosh, the Think Different campaign.

I love that one in the 90s.

And of course, the iPod silhouette commercials from the early 2000s.

The question on everyone's minds is whether Ternus can fill Tim Cook's shoes.

Here's another question: Should he even try? Because to quote an old ad campaign, Apple likes to think different, so no doubt the company's looking for fresh ideas.

But if a newly appointed CEO like Ternus changes too much too fast, that's a problem.

If he doesn't make any changes at all and tries to preserve the way things were, that's also a problem.

Uh, we have a website, bravecorp.co.

Uh, we have a Substack, Brave Together, uh, that goes out, uh, weekly and, and then, uh, you can connect on LinkedIn.

There's a book we have called Brave Together that captures the essence of this Apple story, the shift from, you know, think different to working different together and, you know, some of the Disney Pixar experiences I shared and, and just really about how to lead the future, uh, with your team.

Fantastic.

The exact same brand strategy was used in 1984's, you know, we're going to make 1984 not like 1984 spot, the big Super Bowl spot that only ran one time that everybody in the world knows.

The same strategy was in that as the 1990s campaign, Think Different, where we honored the contributions of Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Einstein and everybody else.

And then that's the exact same strategy as I'm a Mac, I'm a PC.

All of it said, let's honor the contribution of the individual.

That's really and I don't know why that that hasn't ever been articulated that way, because it's so clearly obvious to anybody that's thinking about it, that that's what the brand is all about.

That strategy, they have had wild flexibility.

The difference between the George Orwell kind of feeling of the 1984 spot to the black and white nostalgia of the Think Different campaign to the comedic side-by-side Lenny and Squiggy of I'm a Mac, I'm a PC.

All of them are rooted in the same exact fundamental structure.