A Quick Analysis of Marketing Strategies Used By Apple, Samsung and Huawei (guest starring Sony and Xioami)

Apple’s advertising focuses on branding itself as a personal lifestyle provider rather than selling a technology for its own sake. This is a strategy that has been successfully implemented by other brands, including Coca-Cola’s marketing.

Despite products more expensive on average compared to competitors and a small variety, their popularity is evidence for the significance that customer loyalties play in brand choice that was built up with consistent high-quality marketing - reinforcing what we already know about the effectiveness of marketing that focuses on a product’s relevance to customer’s lifestyles, sentiment and emotions.

It is interesting to note that even Samsung, with phone sales outpacing Apple by 5 percent and Xioami by 8 in Q1 2021, uses a similar line in their visual advertising and has also experienced tremendous success.

Through its promise to deliver products that fulfil customers needs, Apple allocates a sizable budget on marketing to engage its customers and learn what they would like to see in their next product - from ergonomics, design and user interface to features and real-world applications. This is arguably the largest contributor to the global success of its products.

From 2010 to 2015, Apple increased marketing spending from just over US$1 billion to US$1.8 billion. The expense that Apple affords to its marketing and R&D to design customer-centric products is the epicentre of a lawsuit the company filed against Samsung in 2011 for copying its design and features, which was finally settled in 2018.

Surprisingly, Apple's notorious customer service of highly conditional support, red tape, and non-ad hoc troubleshooting policy, Apple products remain popular - suggesting some merit to its replacement policy or its advertising strategy is in order.

Overall, Apple’s advertising and commercials appear to be the most well-received compared to other smartphone manufacturers, which regularly receive millions of views each time they are released. This suggests that its advertising and branding campaigns have at least met with modest success.

To deliver on its promise of delivering products that fulfil customers needs, Apple allocates a sizable budget on marketing to engage its customers and learn what they would like to see in their next product - from ergonomics, design and user interface to features and real-world applications. This is arguably the largest contributor to the global success of its products. From 2010 to 2015, Apple increased marketing spending from just over US$1 billion to US$1.8 billion. The expense that Apple affords to its marketing and R&D to design customer-centric products is the epicentre of a lawsuit the company filed against Samsung in 2011 for copying its design and features, which was finally settled in 2018.

Tape and highly conditional support, as well as its non-ad hoc troubleshooting policy (it does have a robust replacement policy for defective products). Nevertheless, this has not significantly affected the popularity of its products overall, which suggests some merit to its replacement policy or its advertising strategy.

Interestingly, the comments section of official Apple advertisements on YouTube is closed, possibly to curb bots by competitors and other parties generating fake comments. Unsurprisingly, studies seem to agree that negative comments (genuine or not) have a real ability to affect how the actual message is perceived by audiences – and, unfortunately, online anonymity makes it easy for a few users to flood the comments sections on social media, often via the same bots used to falsify user counts in politically and socially sensitive issues. Yes, even megacorporations are not immune to online harassment.