Steve Jobs: The man and the brand.

Few people have impacted the world as much as Steve Jobs has. A genuine visionary, he was bigger than Jesus… even Bieber! I don’t even need to mention his business, because you are reading this on the internet, probably on a Mac or an iPhone, and surely know exactly who he is. Or do you?

As far as the public was concerned, the man was the brand and the brand was the man. His uniform of black turtleneck, blue jeans and white sneakers was as iconic as Jerry Seinfeld’s getup, and the Apple brand mark itself, and although he was one of the richest CEOs in the world, he was also sort of your mate Jobsie. My Facebook feed was filled with tributes from friends, despairing over the loss of the man who gave us our most prized gadgets. Since when did we cry over CEOs? Evidence of just how successful a marketer Steve Jobs was…

In reality, Steve Jobs the brand was at odds with the man himself. A perfectionist and micromanager, he probably wasn’t quite as affable as you think, and even had a reputation for being a bully. There are heaps of stories about his harsh management style and how he’d push through his ideas and shoot down those he disagreed with (Adidas apparently cancelled a $10+ million iAd campaign due to his control freak tendencies). I suppose you can say this is all part and parcel, good point…

…But he even micromanaged his family. A strict pescetarian, it’s claimed that Jobs regulated his children’s diet, telling them what and when to eat it, and there’s no TV in the Jobsie household. It’s a lifestyle more in line with a Buddhist monk (Jobs was actually married in a Buddhist ceremony) than the larger than life CEO of such a fun and fashionable brand.

By many accounts he just wasn’t that nice. But does that even matter? Didn’t the innovative, world-changing products that he developed and fearlessly pushed through bring enough joy into people’s lives to cancel out his own less than lovely personality quirks? There’s a fine line between genius and insanity, and it seems pointless to critique a brilliant mind for its occasional flaws. And having never met the man myself, I don’t actually know what he was like – none of us do.

But here’s what I do know. He was a brave man that took business risks that changed technology and the world. He was a clever man who understood the importance of customer experience, and consequently made half the developed world his customer. He was a marketing visionary who realised the value of brand and knew just how to leverage the potential of his own one. And he was the driving force behind one of the most successful and iconic brands in the world, using willpower and vision to impact us all. It’s easy to speak ill of the dead. It’s a lot harder to emulate their successes. Good luck to new Apple CEO Tim Cook. He’s got a big turtleneck to fill.

Paul Findlay | Creative Director