There is possibly no other company which is so casual and at the same time so powerful as the computer and entertainment manufacturer Apple. The company controls the online-music market, the market for portable music players and is now capturing the high-tech mobile phone market. Apple moves into new electronic markets with strong competitors, in order to monopolise them just a short time later. The CEO, Steve Jobs, has brought a brand into being that is different and at the same time mainstream. A strong magnetic brand which yields more influence in people’s life than one would care to admit. This is absolutely the reason why every company in the world wishes for a strong magnetic brand which can be defined as a CULT BRAND”. They get repeatedly chosen over the competition. They bring higher prices than the competition. And if they are a strong enough brand their customers not only use their products, but evangelize them to the world. This project aims to analyze Apple’s marketing activities in order to figure out, what makes this company so successful. It adds to the traditional marketing theory, the new theory of cult marketing” because traditional marketing delivers no approach to explain the behavior of cult brands. The phenomena of a Cult Brand are comparable to the patterns of a religion and Apple as well has strong believers. When it comes to their favorite brand, they enjoy telling who ever will listen how great it is and why they love it so much. People are camping in front of Apple’s stores just to get their latest innovative product. And if their Messiah, Steve Jobs, enters the stage to introduce a new product to thousands of viewers, he brings the house down. This book discusses Apple‘s unique Marketing Strategy and delivers a guidline on the Example of Apple of the needed conditions to convert an ordinary brand into a CULT BRAND .

Text Sample: Chapter 5, Cult Brands always create customer communities: Communities create social capital that enhances belonging to the brand. There has to be social glue that binds common goals, values and celebrates and mourns the same events. As the congregation’s members invest their time and resources in the community, they create social capital that further enhances the sense of belonging. Levine, a lecturer at University of Illinois believes that Mac users have a common way of thinking and of doing things. They share a certain mind-set. ‘We say we’re Mac users, and that means we have similar values’. Consumers establish networks to support their favorite brand. In the 90’s, most zealous Mac fans went as volunteers to electronic stores, fix the Macs on display and help sell Macs. Therefore the customer community contributed to Apple’s survival. Cult Brands are inclusive: Normally, ad specialists assume that great brands are built upon product exclusivity and targeted marketing in order to gain high margins. In contrast, Cult Brands sell real products to real customers instead of renaming ordinary products with the intention to make them exclusive. Unless the brand is a luxury good company, inclusiveness and not exclusiveness is the primary mission of the brand. Cult Brands have customers with a wide range of ages and incomes. There are universal qualities that all human beings share. A rebellious teenager and an aging baby boomer, while separated in decades by age, possibly seek for similar feeling like temporary escapism and unrestricted fun. For example, a great Cult Brand like Harley Davidson maybe would not have millions of followers and real fans, if they were only targeting, for instance, single males with a medium household income of .000 to .000 a year. Harley Davidson attracts customers of every level of income with different personalities and education. Apple doesn’t separate customers by income or age. On the contrary, they try to attract every sort of customer by providing a widespread product line for every sort of use. The products can be personalised in some ways through customizing them in the internet store. Customers can choose from different storage capacity and processor performance to different sizes of screens. Cult Brands promote personal freedom and draw power from their enemies: Cult Brands have understood that consumers are actively looking for the opportunity to buy feelings of freedom in their everyday lives. Apple provides its customers the freedom to be different and to step out from the monotony life. This brand stresses their attention on areas which are unattended by other brands, like bringing design into the computer sector. Furthermore with their slogans ‘the computer for the rest of us’ or ‘think different’ Apple created a rebellion, freedom and cool image. The rebellion image is a fundamental characteristic of Cult Brands. They have a sense of competitive spirit or a specific attitude against ideals in order to sell the customers the freedom they like. The Mac owner in 1984 and today feels a certain rebellion against authority such as Microsoft, in owning the products. Apple especially provokes Microsoft by their ‘Get-a-Mac’ advertisements.

• Apple Cult

• Customer loyalty

• evangelism

• marketing

• steve jobs

Sascha Schneiders, wurde 1987 in Aachen geboren. Nachdem er seine Hochschulreife im Jahre 2007 absolvierte, begann er eine schulische Ausbildung zum European Business Assistent. Um seine Qualifikation weiter ausbauen zu können, verließ er Aachen für ein Auslandsjahr auf der britischen Insel in Leeds. Dort schloss er 2010 die Leeds Met University mit einem BA in Business and Administration ab. Bereits während seines Studiums sammelte er umfassende praktische Erfahrung in der Hotelbranche. Nach seinem Studium ergänzte er sein theoretisches Wissen durch ein Praktikum im Bereich E-Commerce. Durch sein tägliches Verfolgen der Wirtschaftsnachrichten, wurde er immer wieder mit Rekordumsätzen und Rekordgewinnen eines bestimmten Hi-Tech Unternehmen konfrontiert. Nach kurzer Recherche, stieß er auf eine Erfolgsgeschichte eines Unternehmens und seinem Geschäftsführer, die außergewöhnlicher kaum sein konnte. Fasziniert von der Apple Story, versuchte er das Geheimnis von Apple und Steve Jobs zu erforschen