Why Apple never really ranks well on the World’s Simplest Brands report…
I recently chatted with Brian Rafferty of Siegel+Gale about the survey they do every year to determine the World’s Simplest Brands on the Branding Deep Dive Podcast. Before I read the results of the survey I assumed that since Apple always talks about simplicity, they’d be top 3 globally, if not first. However, Apple only makes the top 10 in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia.
If you look at global performance over the last ten years, Apple isn’t anywhere worth mentioning. Instead brands like Lidl, Google, McDonalds, and Amazon have consistently found themselves in the top 10 globally for the last decade. None of the brands these brands have marketing campaigns around simplicity, so how are they beating Apple?
It comes down to 2 factors.
Higher Expectations
The first factor is that because Apple promises simplicity in their communication, people come to expect simplicity and in recent years Apple hasn’t really delivered on that promise of simplicity. Every year new products come out that are marginally better than the previous editions. Its hard to tell what is actually being updated. They keep flip flopping back and forth with different dongles to the point where some even call Apple “the Dongle Company.”
Apple Is Polarizing
The second factor is that Apple, unlike most brands that are out there, is highly polarizing. People either love Apple or they HATE Apple. Most brands don’t have as many haters as Apple does. You don’t necessarily see Anti-Samsung groups. The only way to really measure how simple people perceive a brand to be is with a survey, so you can you can see why that may be a problem - people bring their biases to the survey.
Underpromise, Overdeliver
The concept here is pretty obvious: the brands that are seen as the simplest underpromise and over deliver. They make a certain promise to their customers and they consistently go above and beyond to keep that promise.