Jobs was quite possibly the best marketer of the last … call it five decades. He invented things that we take so for granted today that we literally don’t believe that he invented them; that they were always there. (Vendor-mandated, standardized, in-store demos of computers were him, for example.)
But with that comes a very dark side. Marketing done right is not evil. But it is oh so easy to slip into dark marketing techniques and Jobs didn’t just slip into them, he jumped head-first from the 5m board into them, then swam around inventing new ones. And that is, unfortunately, a great portion of his legacy and impact today: inventor of many, many, many dark marketing approaches.
Jobs was quite possibly the best marketer of the last … call it five decades. He invented things that we take so for granted today that we literally don’t believe that he invented them; that they were always there. (Vendor-mandated, standardized, in-store demos of computers were him, for example.)
But with that comes a very dark side. Marketing done right is not evil. But it is oh so easy to slip into dark marketing techniques and Jobs didn’t just slip into them, he jumped head-first from the 5m board into them, then swam around inventing new ones. And that is, unfortunately, a great portion of his legacy and impact today: inventor of many, many, many dark marketing approaches.