The Real Legacy of Steve Jobs

In a recent article from FastCompany (http://bit.ly/nnYNwX), author Greg Lindsay talks about innovators losing their ability to innovate as they outsource manufacturing. Almost every technology leader out there send their manufacturing responsibilities overseas. This has had a negative impact on everyone from GM to Apple. These mammoth companies lack the ability to create what they design. Perhaps this is the real reason behind Google’s acquisition of Motorola; to gain control of the entire ecosystem. As Steve Jobs begins to cement his legacy by building the enormous and eco-friendly spaceship headquarters, he made an interesting statement to the Cupertino zoning commission:

“We’ve used our experience making retail buildings all over the world now, and we know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use. And, we want to make the glass specifically for this building here. We can make it curve all the way around the building… It’s pretty cool.”

This is a rarity in America, where this kind of innovation is beginning to disappear. Unfortunately, Apple may now how to make the biggest piece of glass in the world, but can they make it? If Steve Jobs really wants to create a legacy that will see him mentioned in the same breath as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, he needs to rethink Apple’s manufacturing policy. The company has purchased a massive piece of land and is building an enormous building on it, but it will only take up 25% of the space. This building will house some of Apple’s staff, but some will remain in Apple’s original office down the street. What Apple needs to do is take real control of their device ecosystem and bring manufacturing home to the US. Fill that new office space or the old one with the most innovative iPlant the world has seen. Supremely efficient, incredibly safe, amazingly advanced and… there’s one more thing: the largest american-employing manufacturing plant to be created since the early 70s.

Bringing the manufacture of Apple’s products to Cupertino will do more than allow the iPhone 5 I’m destined to stand in line for to have a single line of white text (rather than 2): Designed and Made by Apple in California:

Ultimate control over the entire life of Apple products. This has been a goal since the earliest days of the company (http://bit.ly/1b76kn). Apple has already seen companies like Foxconn pushing knockoffs of the iPhone and iPad. The more hands you have on your CAD drawings, the more likely you’ll find one looking to make a side profit.

New areas of innovation. Imagine what Apple will invent or reinvent to build a Apple-quality manufacturing plant. Imagine being able to sell this technology to other US and global manufacturers, the US government, etc.

An excuse to really leverage alternate energy. Currently Apple’s new office will be powered by internal natural gas generators. Imagine the power requirements of a factory. Solar, wind, thermal, etc. will all need to come into play.

New customer base. The new type of manufacturing plant will no doubt pique the interest of other companies who had been outsourcing. In order to compete more patriotically, but still keep costs efficient, they’ll need new ways to manufacture locally. Much like LucasArts took on other film effects jobs between Star Wars movies, Apple could begin manufacturing for Ford, GE, Boeing, IBM.

Giving back. Apple wouldn’t be giving the country a fish, it would be teaching it to fish all over again. This move could kickstart a rebirth in US manufacturing, reinvigorating the US economy, bringing blue-collar jobs back to the middle class. More people with more money means they could buy more Apple products right?

Good will. America needs a hero. Jobs are outsourced, social services are being slashed, salaries are shrinking while workloads increase, there are 5 applicants for every 2 jobs. Politicians have been selling out the American dream since the mid-70s. We need someone who will give us back our pride in American ingenuity and the opportunity to earn a fair wage for a fare days work.

Halo industries would blossom. Their is already an enormous ecosystem of manufacturers, wholesalers, technologists, etc. around Apple products. Now imagine the impact an Apple manufacturing plant would have on machine parts manufacturers, robot designers, and the myriad of businesses that support factories. Now imagine that the only companies chosen to support Apple’s US manufacturing initiative were US companies.

Steve Jobs, if you really want to Think Different an establish a legacy that will be taught on iPad Xs in grade schools across the country, it’s time to start getting the iAssemblyLine rolling once again: http://bit.ly/nWiFSb.

Image courtesy joshcUK.

BMW Shoots Viral Piece, Does it Hit or Miss?

Earlier this year BMW launched a viral video to promote the launch of it’s new model in the U.S. The video was released as a documentary following the stories of a small Bavarian town named Oberpfaffelbachen. The town’s citizens include a stunt driver, over zealous police chief, event promoter and mayor, trying to save the town from hard financial times. They devise a promotion in which they will launch a 300 horse power BMW 1 Series from a 454 meter (1486.5 feet) ramp from Bavaria, across the Atlantic to the U.S. The town has created an entire festival around the event called Rampenfest. Towns folk are turning their houses into gift shops, town managers are tearing down forests for parking. I won’t give away the ending, but obviously something goes wrong. Not as dramatically as I’d hoped unfortunately.

The quality of the video is excellent, the acting, direction and effects (as subtle as the ramp, as obvious as the teeth) as good as a movie. The video has been seen by millions which can give BMW the opportunity to claim a positive impact, especially considering that it was shot overseas and cost far less than a U.S. 30 second spot. Was it successful? It’s hard to say.

As with any viral, guerilla or virtual advertising, it is hard to judge success. Many still talk about the negative impact of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force guerilla stunt, requiring a payout of 2 million to the city of Boston to cover lawsuits and the cost of our crack bomb squad (who apparently can’t tell the difference between a bomb and a light brite!). The press loves to bring up the GM (Chevy) Yukon promotion run on YouTube. Many people made anti-SUV ads from the audio and video clips GM posted in the make-you-own commercial promotion. This brings us to what determines success.

The GM promotion was considered a failure because of the thousands of ads that were created that shed a positive light on the Yukon, there were a few that were negative. But, is that a bad thing? Most people learn by making mistakes or being told they’re wrong. Negative feedback is just as important, if not more important than positive feedback. How will you know how to improve your product unless people tell you what they DON’T like about it? GM learned that there are alot of people that consider their giant SUV bad for the environment and a gas guzzler. If this prompts them to make eco-friendly, gas-conscious improvements to their vehicles, is that a bad thing for the company or the consumer?

And let’s not forget that with the launch of the BMW campaign, the GM promotion was brought up as a failure again. Really? The Chevy Yukon is mentioned in the press for another car manufacturer’s promotion and that’s a bad thing? Sounds like free press to me. Even when a guerilla or viral campaign can’t be measured in sales or doesn’t have quite the immediate impact a company would hope, there is always the fact that it will continue to keep the brand in the public’s conscience for months and years to come.

Brand visibility is the best way to consider whether or not your viral or guerilla campaign is effective. You can’t often track sales back to a campaign like this or even sign-ups. You may get a solid number of visits to your microsite, but when visitors pull down your video, or assets, or talk about it in their blog, it can be difficult to track especially since those co-opted branding placements end up living for months out of your control.

So, how successful will the BMW campaign be? Well, they millions of viewers at the moment. Add on a few million views of the video once people (like me) download the clip to their iPod/iPhone and show it around, upload it to their YouTube, MySpace, Facebook or blog accounts, hundreds of discussions of it in marketing or news related blogs (where I found it) and then it’s recurring mention every time another automaker or major corporation does a viral or guerilla campaign and it sounds like a success to me.

But BMW knows this. They were arguably one of the first to use viral video not just as a tool to sell cars but a way to engage consumers with their brand, and to redefine their brand as cool. I still have a DVD copy of the BMW Movies from the promotion in 2001. The shorts were directed by Ang Lee, Guy Ritchie, John Woo, Tony Scott, John Frankenheimer and featured Forest Whitakker, Madonna, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke and others. It received rave reviews at Cannes, from the New York Times, and Time magazine. They very successfully hit their middle-age, married, 150k/yr target.

The new spot however, at least in the words of Marketing VP Jack Pitney, was, rather than target a demographic, to target a psychographic. While most companies want to stick to categorizing their demographics by generation, age and finances, BMW is smart enough to know that they can pull an 8 year old boy and an 58 year old woman into their brand halo just by virtue of the fact that they may share common interests, like flashy cars, or mockumentaries.

Despite my feeling that this viral video may be a bit long for most viewers (35 minutes), I’m fairly certain that the folks at BMW will be pleased with the outcome. And I’m happy to help them broadcast their brand (even though I drive the “other” german car)!

Links:
Official Film Site

BMW Films Wikipedia

BMW Films Site (no videos here)

BMW Film “Star” (you can find the rest of the films here as well)

Digg submission where I first found out about the promotion