Bring this into light was former Apple VP of worldwide marketing communication Allison Johnson, who is now the founder of West, a strategic company based in San Francisco. She worked directly for the late Apple co-founder.
According to her: You can tell that in Jobs head the two words he hated the most were ''brand'' and ''marketing.'' People associated brands with television advertising and commercials and artificial things. The most important thing was people's relationship to the product. So any time we said ''brand'' he saw it as a dirty word.
She claims that marketing was a dirty word in Apple. That's weird. ''Marketing is when you have to sell to somebody. If you aren't providing value, if you are not educating them about the product, if you are not helping them get the most out of the product you are selling. And you shouldn't be in that mode.'' Watch the video above.
Apple is actually a supreme example of marketing by informing the public combined with strong sales disciplines through their Apple stores and the web and I don't think that his true view of the business world actually dismissed these two essential components of any successful business.
