Call me a fanboy, but I love the new MacBook ad.
And after reading Hugh MacLeod’s post about marketing and narrative gaps, I think I know why.
If people like buying your product, it’s because its story helps fill in the narrative gaps in their own lives.
Human beings need to tell stories. Historically, it’s the quickest way we have for transmitting useful information to other members of our species. Stories are not just nice things to have, they are essential survival tools.
And yes, the stories we tell ourselves are just as important than the stories we tell other people.
Ergo, marketing is not about selling. Marketing is figuring out where your product stands in relation to personal narrative.
So where does your product fit into other people’s narrative? How does telling your story become a survival tool for other people? If you don’t know, you have a marketing problem.
Narrative gaps. It’s all about the narrative gaps.
The New MacBook’s Story
Watching through it, the new MacBook ad tells at least five stories.
1. Innovation
Right from the start, Jonathan Ive, Senior VP of Design opens by saying (over a rousing Coldplay track);
The MacBook is our most popular product. But what we’ve done – and we’ve made a habit of doing this at Apple – is we decided just to start over.
2. Simplicity
Ive then goes on to explain that:
Traditionally, notebooks are made from multiple parts. But the problem is when you have multiple parts you add size and weight, and you increase the opportunity for failure. And the huge breakthrough that we had with the MacBook, was to replace all of those parts with just one part.
At the end of the video, Ive concludes that;
We’ve refined and refined every detail in the service of the user, just to get rid of complexity. If something doesn’t need to be there, it’s not there. I don’t know how we could make something any more essential, any simpler than the new MacBook.
3. Attention to Detail
Attention to detail is a point that gets repeated over and over in the ad. To quote Ive again:
We have been so fanatical in the in the tolerances of how we build and machine these products. In many ways, I think it’s more beautiful internally than it is externally. I think that testifies to our care, I mean, just how much we care.
4. Environmental Care
Bob Mansfield, Senior VP of Mac Hardware explains the environmental friendliness of the new MacBooks:
One of the things I’m most proud of is the environmental story. We’ve achieved a design that’s both ENERGY STAR compliant and rated EPEAT Gold.
He goes on to say;
We set ourselves on a really ambitious plan to remove toxins from the electronics, the boards, the flex cables, things like mercury in displays, arsenic in glass, BFRs and PVCs from all of our internal cables.
Even the packaging has changed!
By packaging our MacBook in smaller packaging, we’re able to create more dense pallets of computers, we’re able to take less plane space, less fuel, and have a smaller carbon footprint as a result.
5. Quality
Ive reveals near the closing (over a U2 track now);
I love the way that we don’t reserve our best ideas for our highest-end products. Our very best ideas, all of our innovation, we bring to the most popular Mac that we make.
That’s five stories that Apple tells in its ad about the new MacBook, and it’s a story about you as much as it is about them. By telling a story about innovation, simplicity, attention to detail, environmental concern and quality, it fills in the narrative about what people who use Macs value.
Microsoft’s Story
Contrast this with the recent Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates ads from Microsoft.
They’ve funny. I like watching them. But what do they say about you? Nothing. It’s all about them (and nothing too good about them either).