Apple’s Television Advertising Barrage
A few months ago I responded to a post about Apple’s Bean Counter ad over at PSFK with this, “It’s kind of funny, but it’s also pretty much bullshit. I mean Apple puts a whole lot of money in advertising as well and they also have a whole lot of issues with their hardware (more so than their software) which could probably be fixed with the money they spend elsewhere. I’d love to see a comparison of revenue vs. ad spending for the two companies. Imagine they’re not that far off.”
Well, The New York Times ran a story today about Apple’s TV advertising that happened to include Apple and Microsoft’s ad spending ($133 and $191 million respectively). Anyway, when you compare those numbers to 2008 revenues ($32.5 and $60.4 billion respectively) you end with Apple spending .004 cents on advertising per dollar of revenue and Microsoft spending .003. While this might not seem like much difference, consider if Microsoft had spent the extra .001 cents on the dollar, they would have spent $241.6 million instead of $191. Not a small difference.
All of this is a super long winded way of saying two things: First, if it’s good enough for Apple, there must be something to television advertising. Second, marketers who talk about their success without mentioning their advertising spend are missing a pretty big piece of the puzzle.
Hi, I'm 
Interesting to see that Microsoft is paying more for their TV ad spots because I feel like I see many more Apple campaigns. I guess that’s also because their creative is a lot better.
I think the reach of TV is too large to ignore or to be replaced by online display ads.
The difference is Apple has great products (iPhone, iPod Touch, MacBooks, iTunes, App Store, etc), and MSFT does not.
And every Mac vs. PC ad states a benefit to using a Mac over a Windows PC. Whether you believe it or not. MSFT seems to think having a few people sit around telling everyone they are a PC is advertising. They don’t even understand Apple’s ads. Hodgman and Long are computers, not people!
MSFT is boring, dull and irrelevant. They no longer innovate unless you work in IT and think Apple/UNIX doesn’t exist. They are a lumbering elephant that can’t bully other companies anymore so they can’t compete.
Say what you want about Apple, but they put their products out there in the marketplace and people buy them. Period. It isn’t “magic” and it isn’t Steve’s so-called RDF. It’s great products that people want, even if the Windows geeks don’t understand why people like Apple so much. They don’t get it.
Thanks for the comments.
@Rikin: They also may not be targeting you …
@Blad_Rnr: That’s all fair, and I’m an Apple enthusiast (though the Macbook Air I had was the worst computer I’ve ever had). I also can’t disagree that the Microsoft ads suck. But the last point you made about people buying Apple products, a lot more people buy Microsoft. Although Apple is on the up, they’re only 10% of the market …
Noah, you obviously didn’t get the point of the “Bean Counter” commercial.
At the time, Microsoft had budgeted $300 million for an ad campaign to promote Vista (a.k.a. Mojave). In the “Bean Counter” ad Mac asks PC why he doesn’t put more of that money towards fixing Vista. And in true Microsoftian attitude, PC decides to put all the money into advertising.
The problems with Vista have been reported universally in all media.
On the other hand, there are no major fixes required for Mac OS X, so there is no need for Apple to use some of it’s advertising dollars to fix something that isn’t broken.
@Noah… “But the last point you made about people buying Apple products, a lot more people buy Microsoft. Although Apple is on the up, they’re only 10% of the market”
What has your comment to do with anything in the Blad_Rnr comment?
There was nothing in there that talks about market share. (BTW, that 10% figure is for all consumer & corporate users. The number of consumer users is closer to 20%).
Windows users use the old market share story to show that they are in the majority, so therefore they are better. BMW has a much smaller market share than Ford… Does this mean that Ford products are better than BMW’s? Of course not.”
But getting back to Blad_Rnr’s point. His point was “It’s great products that people want, even if the Windows geeks don’t understand why people like Apple so much. They don’t get it.”. This is so true.
You miss a major point: Apple is the GROWING brand here and growing requires getting the word out. That means, among other things, advertising.
MS already has the customers, so should be able to spend less on advertising. Not to mention that a HUGE chunk of their profit is not from consumers making choices, but from pre-installed software on business machines. That does not require any advertising.
So your comparison of dollars spent per dollar of profit is mistaken.
Dude, you didn’t get the Bean Counter ad at all. The point wasn’t about spending money on advertising. It was doing it instead of actually fixing the problem.
Your point about Apple having its own problems, well, every survey indicates that Apple has fewer hardware and software issues than any other vendor.
What you’ve done is create a strawman argument. Argue a point that Apple isn’t even making. Woohoo! You win!
Yup, Apple spends money on advertising. And yes, it’s not like putting the ad money toward development is going to solve anything. It was a cheap shot, but it was one that was hard to resist. Microsoft is such a good target, especially since they hired Crispin.
At the end of the day, it’s not about the size of the buy, it’s about the content of the marketing. Apple’s ads tell better stories. Period. But it would’ve been really snarky to say that in an ad.
It’s difficult to say whether either company has a flawed revenue to spend model… an interesting business decision for sure, and one that’s tough to comment on, as a lowly planner. But as a media kid, I’d say that regardless of budget, it’s CP+B’s job to make sure they are spending smart to reach their target. There is certainly enough money flying around here to accomplish objectives, if you have a good think and get creative with your media.
I dig your second point; a nice shout-out to how crucial the spending can be, often overshadowed by execution. What good is creative if you’re not putting up the bones for space and good media thinking?
interesting stuff, noah — thanks for giving us a peak behind the curtain.
in my mind, the difference is the brand — of course i would say that — i’m a brand person, right?! — but it does seem that apple benefits from such strong positive brand equity that what seems unforgivable for a brand like microsoft doesn’t even generate questions for one like apple — well, at least until now…
@ Noah… you’re probably right… if they were targeting me they’d be wasting even more money!
I haven’t checked in here for some time as I thought it was getting boring, but the last few posts are good quality so I guess I’ll add you back to my everyday bloglist. You deserve it my friend :)