Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired--and Secretive--Company Really Works

by Adam Lashinsky

  Filming the event was no small production. An Apple creative director and crew flew to Hawaii. They worked with local florists to get the look they wanted. They also huddled repeatedly with the couple, who was understandably concerned by all the hubbub. A camera crew canvassed the beach the day before to make sure they understood where the sun would set. Shortly after the wedding, the director began uploading footage and called California with good news: “I’m super happy,” he said. Steve Jobs was pleased, too. He approved the new footage a few days before Macworld. In the end, the Macworld keynote used a roughly sixty-second clip of the wedding, featuring sequences of the bride and groom kissing, the bride and her father dancing, and the newlywed couple strolling off into the sunset. Slightly longer versions ran during an on-site trailer at the event and in Apple retail stores. “The budget is significant,” remembered Ghini, who nevertheless was unfazed by the expenditure. “It had to be because of the last-minute changes.”

  From Apple’s perspective, the lavish spending is worth it because nothing is more valuable than the Apple brand. It’s a nuanced and subtle approach. Nine times out of ten, the distinctions will not consciously register with the typical consumer. But that’s beside the point. The sum total of Apple’s obsessions, including how it projects its image, absolutely is not lost on its customers, who intuitively appreciate that Apple is a cut above. This explains why no one at Apple thinks it’s the slightest bit unusual to hire the London Symphony Orchestra to record iMovie music trailers.

  And nobody bats an eye at big outlays that end up being for naught. When Apple was preparing to launch the version of its Macintosh operating system called Snow Leopard, the marketing team had planned to use a stock photo of an elusive cat but wanted to try to do better. The group sent a crew to photograph a snow leopard in captivity—at considerable expense. Steve Jobs wasn’t satisfied with the result. “He looks fat and lazy,” said Jobs. “Not hungry and fast.”

  The lights go down. The crowd hushes itself with anticipation. Music that has been blaring, typically a popular anthem, an old U2 song perhaps, fades. Steve Jobs walks onstage, and the crowd goes wild. Senior Apple executives sit in the first couple of rows, joined by VIPs like venture capitalist John Doerr or Apple board member Al Gore. They clap and laugh and cheer along with everyone else. In Cupertin K. I by VIPso, Apple employees gather in cafeterias to watch on closed-circuit TVs. Given Apple’s secrecy, what the public is about to see in an auditorium and what online viewers will watch on their iPads will be completely new to them—and just as new to Apple’s employees. Even those who’ve worked on a portion of an about-to-be-launched product won’t necessarily have a clue about what else will be announced simultaneously. They only know their portion.

  This is an Apple keynote address. Steve Jobs described marketing as the cover of the Apple book, with products being what’s on the pages inside. Just as products are the result of nearly endless design and manufacturing iterations, the keynote address is the highly honed presentation whereby Apple introduces to the world the fruits of its labor.

  Jobs made an art form of keynotes, a stylized form of performance art that required contributions from the entire company. In the same way the different components of a jumbo jet are manufactured around the world and then assembled in a giant factory at the end of an arduous process, so, too, are Apple keynotes obsessively crafted in segments and then cobbled together for a massive audience on opening day.

  Onstage, the keynote is a long collection of seemingly off-the-cuff remarks and live demonstrations. Behind the stage, Apple employees are a wreck. They’ve been rehearsing for months, leaving nothing to chance, assembling slides and photos and talking points to be whittled down into the presentation that is going on right now. (The slides will be in Apple’s Keynote presentation software, of course, introduced in 2003 as Apple’s answer to Microsoft’s PowerPoint. The software grew out of a program Jobs had been using for just this purpose.) For a Mac event, Jobs worked off a Mac on a cart onstage. Offstage, an identical cart carried an identical Mac with the identical presentation on it in case the first one crashed. Jobs himself rehearsed the presentation dozens of times so that each relaxed statement would come off just right. Partners, too, will have run through multiple rehearsals, all according to Apple’s schedule and following Apple’s script. One partner executive—Apple invites companies whose software works on Apple products to demonstrate their wares to buttress Apple’s offerings—recounted spending a week and a half in Cupertino leading up to an Apple product launch. He presented to an increasingly senior list of Apple executives, culminating with Jobs. An aide to another high-profile executive who debuted software that ran on Apple’s iPhone recalled the marching orders: “They told us—didn’t ask us, told us—what time the rehearsal was, what he should wear, and what he should say. There was no discussion about it.”

  A keynote will cycle through a handful of products. For years Jobs did the entire presentation himself, with bit roles played by low-level employees brought onstage to demonstrate features. Over time, other executives took on more and more prominent roles. The signature finale to a major keynote speech is the slide that appears saying, ONE MORE THING…—signifying something important, new, and exciting. (The iPod Shuffle in 2005, the fifteen-inch MacBook Pro in 2006, and a dramatically revamped MacBook Air in 2010 are some examples.) Music product events will conclude with a performance by a big-name recording artist, like John Mayer or Coldplay’s Chris Martin. In 2009, a tentative Norah Jones sang two songs to conclude an iTunes event, obviously rattled by Apple’s neurotic pre-gig machinations. “There’s lots of secret passageways back there, secret door-knocks,” she said, an electric guitar hanging from her neck. fromˀneck. “I feel like a burden’s been lifted now that we can play.” She added, “Just kidding,” though clearly she wasn’t. After Jones strummed her last note, Jobs came out and pecked her on the cheek.

  When the crowds are gone and the briefings are over, Apple employees will repair to one of a handful of nearby watering holes, like the XYZ Bar at the W Hotel across the street from the Moscone Center, to unwind. Many will immediately take vacations. They know the work on the next keynote will begin as soon as they return.

  Apple’s marketing and communications team works in a building just across from 1 Infinite Loop called M-3, the M standing for “Mariani Avenue,” not for marketing. When the marketers walk through the front door and then two consecutive secured doors, they walk around a light blue wall to get to their desks. On the wall is painted a prominent message in large whitish silver letters. It reads: SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY. A broad line is drawn through the first two SIMPLIFYs.

  It is not just Apple’s products that are fiercely simple, but also the way it deploys its brand. Consider the boilerplate language that appears at the bottom of every press release Apple issues. A version from late 2011 read: “Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.” That’s it. Three sentences to describe $108 billion in revenue. Each word is carefully chosen. Design is the first verb. Macs come first because, after all, Macs came first. Apple “leads” and “reinvents.” It is “revolutionary” (twice), and is nothing if not about the “future.” The wording is conscious and deliberate. “Revolutionize,” said a former Apple marketer, “may be the most used word in Apple marketing.”

  The company is just as careful about how the Apple brand is used. Nobody has blanket permission to use it, first of all, and that includes insiders. A consultant who put the logo on his website to show that Apple was a client was asked to take it down. People who buy Apple products, on the other hand, are encouraged to display the Apple logo: Inside its product packaging Apple includes stickers with the
iconic apple, which have a way of showing up on everything from spiral notebooks to car bumpers to refrigerators.

  The message is driven home to employees who deal with the outside world. “You don’t want anything to detract from the brand,” said Lars Albright, an executive in Apple’s iAd mobile advertising business who left Apple in 2011 and founded SessionM, a start-up that helps applications developers retain their users. “And that’s in every aspect of it. You think through the lens of ‘Would this jeopardize the brand? Do we need to do it? Is it too much of a risk?’ ”

  Apple’s brand czar, Hiroki Asai, is a quiet executive almost completely unknown to the general public. He studied printed design at California Polytechnic State University, where Mary LaPorte, his graphic design professor, remembered him as a stickler for details and aesthetic integrity. “If he wanted a coffee cup stain on a poster, then he would make sure it was coffee, and not brown ink,” she r Kinkaestheticecalled.

  After college, he worked at a consulting firm in San Francisco, where Pixar and later Apple were clients. He joined Apple in 2001, ultimately reported directly to Steve Jobs, and is considered the final word on every piece of marketing material except for advertising. His domain, as explained in his Cal Poly bio, provides another piece of insight into the Apple penchant for integration. “With over 200 creatives under his supervision, his team has been responsible for all of the packaging, retail store graphics, website, on-line store, direct marketing, videos, and event graphics for Apple globally for the past decade,” the bio reads. “His team is a combination of Art Directors, Writers, Motion Graphic Designers, Developers, and Designers… The team is unique in that it is the only one of its size that can design, produce, and engineer all of the communications work from every creative discipline all in-house.” Inside Apple, Asai is known as a silent force who understood what Jobs thought about the Apple brand and knew, said one colleague, “how to channel Steve.” Asai also is known for his youthful appearance. Said an executive who worked with him: “He looks like he just got out of third-period design class.”

  As for advertising, Apple had a distinctive approach under Steve Jobs. He considered advertising a key part of marketing, and he managed it himself. He met weekly with Lee Clow, the creative director for TBWAChiatDay, Apple’s longtime agency. Jobs also took a direct interest in where the ads ran. He favored TV shows that fit the sensibility of Apple’s perceived customer. Modern Family, The Daily Show, and Family Guy were favorites. Smarter reality TV like The Amazing Race was preferred over the more mean-spirited Survivor. Jobs once flew off into a rage when an Apple spot accidentally found its way onto Glenn Beck’s program on the Fox News Channel. Jobs detested Fox News, but he generally didn’t want Apple to advertise on any political talking-head show.

  Jobs remained a believer in print media even as his devices, especially the iPad, were hastening print’s demise. Jobs was particularly enamored with Apple’s full-page ads being positioned on the back covers of major magazines. Pick up a popular magazine to this day, and you’ll likely see an Apple ad on the back. Monica Karo, the executive at OMD charged with buying ads on Apple’s behalf, would periodically attempt to convince Jobs to run ads in new publications. Jobs, the master of publicity, had a stock response: “You worry about the back covers,” he said. “I’ll take care of the front covers.”

  So it’s clear, front covers can’t be purchased, at least not in respectable publications. But they are extremely valuable to marketers. Jobs knew better than any business executive in the world how to land himself on the front cover to promote a product. Apple also gets free publicity when its products appear in popular TV shows and films. The company says it never pays for product placement, but in 2010 Apple products appeared 386 times in original broadcast programs, according to Nielsen.

  Such publicity is priceless, of course. Shortly before the iPad was released, the company agreed to provide two working units to the hit ABC sitcom Modern Family, which built an entire episode around geek-dad Phil Dunphy’s earnest yearning for an iPad, which just happened to be released on his birthday. “It’s like Steve Jobs and God got together to say ‘We love you, Phil,’ ” the character said.

  Apple’s built-in advantage is that the creative set uses Apple’s products. “I happen to be an Apple enthusiast and a big gadget freak, so I’m up on this stuff,” said Steve Levitan, the co-creator of Modern Family. “The only product I’ve ever waited in line for was an iPhone.” Levitan said the idea for the iPad episode originated creatively. “We’re very selective. We tend to use these products when we want to use them anyway.” He said the creative team was excited to learn that Jobs was a fan of the show. Levitan once arranged to travel to Northern California to meet Jobs, but the meeting fell through. He subsequently dealt regularly with the two Apple executives who are among the best known in Hollywood: iTunes chief Eddy Cue and Suzanne Lindbergh, Apple’s New York–based head of product placements. Lindbergh must also have the coolest title of any Apple honcho: “director buzz.”

  One of Apple’s most potent storytelling tools is its muscular use of public relations. Once again, it’s an example of Apple disregarding all the normal rules of corporate life. For Apple, PR is as carefully managed, tight-lipped, and unforgiving as its approach to product design and internal secrecy.

  Indeed, Apple thinks different(ly) about something as mundane as who speaks for Apple. When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, precisely five people were authorized to speak to the press about it: Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Greg Joswiak, and Bob Borchers. Joswiak was the vice president for iPhone product marketing, and Borchers worked for him. The two most senior product executives who built the iPhone, hardware boss Tony Fadell and Scott Forstall, whose team developed the software, were not on that list—and were none too happy, per Borchers, to be excluded from the victory lap in the media.

  As the lowest-ranking member of the approved group, Borchers explained the mentality of restricting even senior executives from speaking. “The challenge with those guys is that they’re super smart and they know a lot of details, but they haven’t spent a lot of time in front of the press,” he said. “They’re likely to get asked questions that they know the answers to but that they haven’t learned how to gracefully avoid answering.”

  Apple’s public relations department operates not so much on a need-to-know basis as a you-will-not-know basis. It may be the one corner of the company that has most mastered the art of saying no. Members of the PR team have specific assignments, typically organized around product areas. Product is the one subject about which Apple’s PR group will talk, especially to repeat factual information about products in the marketplace. Off-limits questions include unreleased products, personal information about Apple executives, details about future Apple events, and pretty much anything about the inner workings of the company. In a phone call or meeting with an Apple publicist, a journalist is far more likely to be probed for information about upcoming coverage than to be the recipient of anything of value.

  Apple’s PR strategy with journalists, hobbyists, and careerists from every corner of the earth is to be extremely judicious about doling out information. It’s a posture almost no other company can take. The norm in the corporate world is for public relations professionals to maintain relationships with reporters. They schmooze them, flatter them, feed them tidbits—not to mention food and drink—keep abreast of their personal lives, and invite them into the company for periodic updates from senior management.

  Apple plays this game only at the highest levels. Katie Cotton, its powerful vice president of worldwide communications, runs the PR apparatus. A slender, sharp-elbowed forty-six-year-old, Cotton worked in the 1990s at a PR agency in Los Angeles, KillerApp Communications, where she represented nascent digital entertainment companies like RealNetworks and Virgin Interactive Entertainment. The agency did work for NeXT, though Cotton did not, and through connections in the Apple-NeXT orbit she ended up at Apple in 1996. Rising to the t
op of the PR ranks, Cotton ultimately reported directly to Steve Jobs and fiercely guarded his privacy, barring the door to all but a handful of reporters. A gatekeeper for the outside world, she is the enforcer internally, too, coming down hard on any Apple employee, almost no matter how senior, with the mistaken impression that he or she is allowed to speak on behalf of Apple. In a world of men for whom a clean pair of blue jeans counts as business attire, Cotton stands out for her style; her Alexander Wang dresses and shoes are far more Manhattan than San Jose.

  Under Cotton’s regime, Apple’s approach makes it no place to learn PR—because PR at Apple is mostly a one-way street. Publicists at other companies, accustomed to a large measure of sycophantism toward journalists and their clients, are fascinated by the undiplomatic ways of Apple. “They are highly aggressive and communicative when they want something from you,” reflected a publicist for a major technology company that is an Apple partner. “But the moment you’re no longer needed, it’s as if you didn’t exist anymore. They’ll literally stop returning phone calls. Nobody else can do that.”

  Apple PR does play favorites. Reporters and editors from a handful of cherished publications with long relationships with the company, Fortune magazine among them, enjoy preferential treatment. This is especially true around product launches, when Apple will negotiate exclusive access in return for prominent placement—the front covers Jobs bragged about handling himself. iTunes, for example, was unveiled on the cover of Fortune in 2003, featuring a photo of Jobs with the singer Sheryl Crow. The previous year Apple blessed Time with an exclusive look at the first flat-panel iMac, with Jobs grinning on a sleek display next to the headline “Flat-out Cool!”

  Investors fare no differently with Apple. The company’s two-person investor-relations team doles out precious little information to Wall Street analysts and shareholders, in a way that is unlike any other company’s. Apple holds no analyst day, a routine event at most companies that exposes several hundred investors to upper management, who make presentations about the company’s plans. Jobs treated investors with something between ambivalence and contempt. “He was the only CEO I knew who didn’t meet with investors,” said Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford Bernstein. “You could be a shareholder with $2 billion worth of stock for five years and never have met Steve Jobs.” Sacconaghi viewed the Apple management team as nearly useless in trying to probe for information, with one exception. “Tim Cook is the only one who would provide some color that was unscripted,” he said.