PHIL SIMON
“Marketing is the cost you pay for lousy products.”
—Sergey Brin
This is one of my favorite quotes from Brin, a man I consider to be one of the smartest on the planet. Some disagree with him, but I actually think that he’s on to something.
Think about Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Do they go a great deal of advertising? Not really. Their platforms and their planks, users, customers, and partners do most of their marketing for them.
This happens every time that someone:
- Notices someone using iPad on the subway.
- Sees someone reading a Kindle at the gym.
- Says to someone, “Just Google it.”
- New friends connect on Facebook.
Simon Says
In the Age of the Platform, the old rules of marketing and advertising no longer apply.
Dude-
Apple spent $691M in advertising in fiscal 2010 – Dell spent $619M. Only a tiny fraction of total revenue for each company but still a boatload of money – television is flooded with iPad and iPhone commercials – not to mention print ads.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000119312510238044/d10k.htm
https://i.dell.com/sites/content/corporate/secure/en/Documents/FY10_Form10K_Final.pdf
Good point, Fernando. I should have stated it better. As a percentage of revenue, it’s pretty small–about 1 percent.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/211977-2010-apple-s-63-5-billion-revenue-year
I suspect that it’s a fraction of the amount spend by other big companies.