In Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs he detailed the Apple marketing philosophy that I still witness in the company today:
The Apple Marketing Philosophy stressed three points:
- The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: “We will truly understand their needs better than any other company.”
- The second was focus: “In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.”
- The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. “People DO judge a book by its cover,” [Jobs] wrote. “We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.”
It's hard to summarise something better than Steve Jobs could, but I'll try: the way we do anything is the way we do everything.