Give your customers a vision to aspire to

Understand what your customer aspires to (be / have / produce) and give them a vision that mirrors this. When you and your customer are working towards the same goal, you create trust.

If Apple has taught us anything about marketing, it’s that we all have an idealized image of ourselves – and  when we advocate a position to someone, let’s make sure we’re speaking to that idealized vision. In Apple’s case, they are subtly pushing a clean, cool, modern version of power and class (through computers). What Apple does right:

1. Clean it up
2. Use bright, beautiful images because images are just easier to process on a deep level than text
3. Don’t use garbage content to market. Every ‘#1 in…’ cheapens your brand
4. Keep the text simple. Seriously. Whatever you have, cut it in half, and it’s probably still too much.

I realize ‘make it look like Apple’ is an over-done theme in the advertising world, but honestly who couldn’t benefit from some clean up, straight-talk and beautiful images. Let’s not copy Apple, but let’s understand the logic of why they advertise the way they do (and why it’s effective, for the most part).