Steve Jobs inspired Best Buy to switch from celebrities to inventors for Super Bowl ad
The numerous tributes to late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs after he died last October prompted big-box retailer Best Buy to change its Super Bowl advertising strategy from using celebrities to spotlighting inventors instead, according to a new report.
The Richfield, Minn., company attempted to capitalize on the star appeals of popstar Justin Bieber and rocker Ozzy Osbourne with a television commercial during last year's Super Bowl. This year, however, the company will change its tack and highlight Silicon Valley innovators like Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom and cameraphone pioneer Philippe Kahn, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
Best Buy's marketing chief Drew Panayiotou told the publication that Jobs' legacy was the reason for the change. After Jobs passed away last October, people around the world flocked to Apple retail stores to mourn him and pay tribute to his legacy. Most recently, U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned Jobs as an example of American ingenuity during the State of the Union address last month.
Panayiotou said the tributes made him realize that technology inventors like Jobs are today's stars. The executive then decided to forgo celebrity power and switch to a feature on inventors for Best Buy's 2012 Super Bowl ad.
He admitted that the move was risky, and the company's bet is a particularly high-stakes one given how much it cost. A 30-second commercial during this year's football championship reportedly cost a record $3.5 million on average. The retailer could also find its commercial eclipsed by spots promoting Budweiser beer and M&M candy, both of which will air during the same first-quarter break.
“Big brands like to hire celebrities,” Panayiotou told Bloomberg in an interview. “We looked at everyone from George Clooney to Stephen Colbert. We believe the inventors are more than enough. I give those 125 million viewers a lot of credit. I think they’ll appreciate the story.”
Panayiotou did admit that Kahn and Systrom don't have the same kind of popularity as Jobs had. “They may not be at the same level as Steve Jobs, but they created some amazing stuff,” he said.
Best Buy executive vice president Mike Vitelli revealed that the commercial isn't meant to be funny. “It’s a statement that these people are inventing technology and what we’re inventing is a way to bring that technology to you and make it easy for you.”
This isn't the first time that Best Buy has drawn inspiration from Apple's image to help promote itself. Last November, the retailer ran ads highlighting its stores as places to buy Apple products. According to one analyst, Apple devices were some of the strongest-selling products for Best Buy during last year's holiday shopping season.
Best Buy is also working to make its brick-and-mortar stores more like Apple's own retail outlets, which have been held up as examples of retail done right. For instance, the company is striving to improve its customer service and de-clutter stores to resemble Apple's minimalist displays.
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Best Buy is also working to make its brick-and-mortar stores more like Apple's own retail outlets, which have been held up as examples of retail done right. For instance, the company is striving to improve its customer service and de-clutter stores to resemble Apple's minimalist displays.
If Best Buy wants to improve its customer service, it needs to instigate product training in depth ... customers want to know ... The current tact is sell more Best Buy Cards, Sell GeeK Squad services, Sell high markup cables and accessories ... fill the basket. They high pressure with probing questions about all these externals, before a customer has even considered actually buying something. Savvy customers already know this and just
If Best Buy wants to improve its customer service, it needs to instigate product training in depth ... customers want to know ... The current tact is sell more Best Buy Cards, Sell GeeK Squad services, Sell high markup cables and accessories ... fill the basket. They high pressure with probing questions about all these externals, before a customer has even considered actually buying something. Savvy customers already know this and just
lol so true...I worked at Best Buy doing the Merch team when I lived in Baltimore...often when stocking pretty much ANY section I was much more knowledgeable than any of the trained people there (even most of the geek squad)
And I got no commission for my help -_-
So if best buy, in it's modest way, starts a movement in the populous to look away from the negativity of celebrity and to start to value the personalities that improve our world then all the better. It is a far more positive approach to presenting your retail operation than attaching yourself to the drug crazed world of Hollywood.
Seriously folks the current preoccupation with celebrities in the USA is getting to the point of being gross. These people do nothing to better the country, the economy or the future of man.
So if best buy, in it's modest way, starts a movement in the populous to look away from the negativity of celebrity and to start to value the personalities that improve our world then all the better. It is a far more positive approach to presenting your retail operation than attaching yourself to the drug crazed world of Hollywood.
Congrats on their decision. We need other companies to follow their lead. We need to foster the idea that science and technology are "cool" and worthy of pursuit. We used to honor people of science not make them the butt of geek jokes as we do now.
Seriously folks the current preoccupation with celebrities in the USA is getting to the point of being gross.
Agree.
These people do nothing to better the country, the economy or the future of man.
Disagree strongly. Entertainment is one of America's greatest industries. It helps our balance of trade. We export huge amounts of audio and video. We make billions on it.
And theater and music have been improving the future of man ever since they were invented.
Pop songs, maybe not so much.
That stands to reason. Steve Jobs the inventor of... Hmm, what did he invent? The mp3 player? The personal computer? The smart phone? Maybe the tablet computer?
He invented the Graphical User Interface and the Touchscreen.
That stands to reason. Steve Jobs the inventor of... Hmm, what did he invent? The mp3 player? The personal computer? The smart phone? Maybe the tablet computer?
Apple has 323 patents with Steve Jobs name on it.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...s-patents.html
So while he may not have come up with the original devices you listed, he sure did improve them. That makes him an inventor in my book.
That stands to reason. Steve Jobs the inventor of... Hmm, what did he invent? The mp3 player? The personal computer? The smart phone? Maybe the tablet computer?
Hmm, I suggest you go first learn the difference between inventor and innovator. One of the things an innovator does is to facilitate, motivate and enable inventors. So it's understandable that he would inspire an ad campaign highlighting inventors.
The freezers, refigerators, PC Parts to Computers makes it an old school JCPenney's without the clothing, Cosmetics, Jewelry and charm.
Inventing ways to serve me? Stop being the next Home Depot. Then again, never mind. I cannot stand the store and wouldn't buy a single item from it.
That stands to reason. Steve Jobs the inventor of... Hmm, what did he invent? The mp3 player? The personal computer? The smart phone? Maybe the tablet computer?
Not to get into a discussion which might degenerate into something akin to the Al Gore/internet allegory, it might be said that the difference Steve Jobs brought to the table was to unquestionably create a very rare and empowering corporate culture - renegade to its era and usage of trade - that took the time to thoroughly understand what people actually needed to best accomplish their daily tasks and to thereby deliver unique solutions in product form to a world which only slowly began to understand the difference. All else is mere details.
In the end, as Mr. Jobs was able to see, the world vindicated his "invention" by beating a path to his door.
That stands to reason. Steve Jobs the inventor of... Hmm, what did he invent? The mp3 player? The personal computer? The smart phone? Maybe the tablet computer?
He was a poster boy for invention, even if he, himself, on his own, invented relatively little.
That stands to reason. Steve Jobs the inventor of... Hmm, what did he invent? The mp3 player? The personal computer? The smart phone? Maybe the tablet computer?
I contracted back in '2000 for a company in the Northwest whose founder had dozens of patents with his time at Motorola. He left Moto after working on the Police Communcations systems and consumer RF products where he got all his patents.
He founded a start up around his EE background and sold it for $150 million.
He thinks he's the next Steve Jobs and when he finds out a consultant from NeXT and later Apple is contracted for him he wants to pick my brains and tells me he's going to bring the Internet to Senior Communities as those 65+ members of our society have approximately 2/3rds the available capital.
He shows me a prototype Linux All-in-One box where Intel controls the custom kernel and everything else we can put on the box. It'll cost seniors $799 plus extra pushing it towards $999 before taxes.
Each person will access this like a glorified 3270 dumb terminal with a custom Web UI and Java Mailing services.
He asked me what I thought.
My response, ``Call Apple, get them to Kiosk the iMac on a custom build of either OS 9 and wait for the upcoming release of OS X.''
The man blew several million in angel money, had no concept of Operating Systems, Consumer PC Hardware and worst of all, couldn't hire technical talent, period. I asked several of the regular employees just how he actually had a successful business prior and how he managed to get so many patents at Moto.
All of his patents were with several other team members leaving me to surmise he did very little but got his name on stuff.
Having been around Steve, he was in everyone's face at every phase of the design and he also came up with every product roadmap. He redesigned every facet at Apple.
Steve wasn't sitting around waiting for Ive or anyone else to come to him with a brilliant idea. These ideas are always in teams, but the vision and execution, not to mention ultimate signing off on passing the Steve Jobs indepth tests of whether it's ``sh** or insanely great'' always stopped at his door.
Every design patent and hardware patent with his name on them, right down to building designs, packaging designs, etc., going back to NeXT and his first run at Apple most certainly are well earned and well deserved.
I fondly recall the day he demoed a pre-release of WebObjects 3 at NeXT, stood up and declard it was sh** and told everyone what he wanted fixed before he'd waste his time and NeXT on a big splash presentation. WOF 3.x and later 4.x revolutionized the dynamic web services industry, but not before it passed his demands.
That start up folded after burning through angel funding and the entire idea about selling to seniors went into the crapper because they thought they could make a better iMac without the Engineering, Development and Design that Apple implemented to make it happen.
Most start ups fail because the lack of vision by it's founders. It's not something you can teach. You either have it or you don't.
You either can walk into a room and size up a crowd or you cannot. It's innately ingrained into one's being by how one is raised. A fine eye for detail comes from Paul Jobs. Steve just took it to the nth degree.
If you don't know that Steve designed Apple and NeXT's fully automatic assembly plants to his exacting specifications often requiring Mechanical Engineers to come up with new tooling solutions or that he came up with the NeXT Cube internal requirements just like he did with the original Mac, then forward to the Apple Cube and Mac Mini then you don't know much about Steven P. Jobs.
That stands to reason. Steve Jobs the inventor of... Hmm, what did he invent? The mp3 player? The personal computer? The smart phone? Maybe the tablet computer?
He has 313 patents to his name. He seems pretty inventive even without the innovations at Apple and the products that have inspired many.
I think you summed up well how SJ had an eye for specifying how a particular 'system' should function based on a holistic approach to every component's function, placement and appearance mattered. He took system engineering requirement and specification to the next level and competitors will fail unless the learn to emulate that disciplined approach.
Second, this ad campaign wont make me want to set foot in a Best Buy store ever again.
That stands to reason. Steve Jobs the inventor of... Hmm, what did he invent? The mp3 player? The personal computer? The smart phone? Maybe the tablet computer?
I take it you believe only engineers are inventors?
Inventors have ideas, engineers make them work. Only rarely are they one and the same person.