Homage to Apple Actually AdWeek’s “Best of the 2000s” Awards
“People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company,” former Apple CEO John Sculley told the Guardian in 1997. “It was the marketing company of the decade.”
Evidently that’s as true today as it was 12 years ago, because Apple (AAPL) has won a bundle of AdWeek’s “Best of the Decade” awards. The advertising trade mag named Apple “Brand of the Decade,” its “Get a Mac” ads ”Campaign of the Decade,” its iPod “Product of the Decade,” its iPod silhouettes ads “Out-of-Home Ad of the Decade” and CEO Steve Jobs “Marketer of the Decade.”
“Though the brand almost petered out in the ’90s, last year consumers told Interbrand that Apple was the thing they couldn’t live without and the one they found most inspiring,” AdWeek explains. “Why? Perhaps it’s Apple’s vaguely antiauthoritarian stance (epitomized in its iconic ‘1984’ ad). A true-in-practice focus on relentlessly improving its products also helps. But maybe it comes down to this: Most brands are run by committee, but this one is the embodiment of a living, breathing person. Steve Jobs is Apple in the way that Richard Branson is Virgin. Of course it helps when you’re a brilliant marketer who happens to be the CEO.”
Apple, it’s worth noting, also came close to winning “Digital Company of the Decade,” but was bested by Google (GOOG), which was named “Media Company of the Decade” as well.